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in 2022 with funding from 
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FUGITIVE ESSAYS 
BY 
JOSIAH ROYCE 


LONDON * HUMPHREY MILFORD 


OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 


FUGITIVE ESSAYS 
BY JOSIAH ROYCE 


WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 


Dr. J. LOEWENBERG 





CAMBRIDGE 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 


es 


COPYRIGHT, 1920 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 


SECOND IMPRESSION 


PRINTED AT 
THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 


POO RESET LN URO DU CIREON ay eek cau ers 3 
SRC) gO WA GS ORC A RN Of me Ug ya ed Be eid BA MLD ED Cabeio cat et be Ar Oy, 41 
SRE CD eA N DEUCE REV OLG LT LO Nie rie mo oeails 66 
Poe eNATURKRE TOR VOLUN PARRY, PROGRESS? 27) '06 


Phy PRACTICAL SIGNIBEICANCE: OF PESSI- 


NDESIVEP Eee Meter elar inital orb ent be cies utr pod tei oats ha es 133 
Broo Milo MyAND MODERN THOUGHT. 155 
Saito oc) Hak WG Ey Laan DaWiRO IN Gio lee cor) aan 187 
ONSEURPOSERINVEHOUGH Tia uel invcn awa, 219 


GEORGE ELIOT AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER . 261 
NATURAL RIGHTS AND SPINOZA’S ESSAY ON 


TELBE RD VAR Marin mse lly at gata rt lt eawrn adn 290 
RUE DRCAY ON EARNESTNESS ne 3 ume: 300 
OMEN GEN DaWORKING uemeMiei on acelin. 322 
HOWABELLERSTARECMADE (oi) )) Mluwe uy tue 345 
RENCE GER GRE DES RU Diver pn itimeniten ewe vata tie 364 
HHUECRROBLEM OB .PARAGELSUS) ain ua ein. 378 


POPE LEO’S PHILOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT AND 
ITS RELATIONS TO MODERN THOUGHT .. 408 


' 
ACHE bent 
Pera 


h ats 
af 


‘ EY AAR 
a). ; 





EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


ag HE essays which comprise the present volume are 


the occasional and, with the exception of the last 

three, the early fruits of Professor Royce’s philo- 
sophic genius. The title “Fugitive Essays”’ was chosen 
not to emphasize the editor’s judgment of them. How- 
ever excellent in themselves, in the total body of Pro- 
fessor Royce’s works these early achievements of his 
must needs occupy a subordinate place. This is said not 
to detract from their intrinsic and enduring worth but 
rather to testify to the greatness of their author. For 
such was his philosophic fecundity that products of a 
high order must, when one considers the wealth of his 
other contributions, be characterized as fugitive. There 
is also a more obvious reason for so designating them. 
They are fugitive in a literal sense. Most of them are 
now virtually inaccessible, buried as they are in the 
pages of local periodicals which have long since ceased to 
appear. Some were never published and others found 
their way to journals more or less ephemeral. Pub- 
lished here for the first time are the following: “The 
Practical Significance of Pessimism” (1879), “Tests of 
Right and Wrong” (1880), ““On Purpose in Thought”’ 
(1880), and “Natural Rights and Spinoza’s Essay on 
Liberty” (1880). The rest of the essays appeared in the 
following publications: “Schiller’s Ethical Studies” in 
The Fournal of Speculative Philosophy (1878); “Shelley 
and the Revolution,” “George Eliot as a Religious 
Teacher,” “The Decay of Earnestness,” “‘Doubting and 
Working,” “‘How Beliefs are Made” in The Californian 
(1880-1882); “The Nature of Voluntary Progress,” 
“Pessimism and Modern Thought” in The Berkeley 


4 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


Quarterly (1880-1881); “A Neglected Study” in The 
Harvard Monthly (1890); ‘The Problem of Paracelsus”’ 
in the publications of the Boston Browning Society 
(1893); and “Pope Leo’s Philosophical Movement and 
its Relation to Modern Thought” in The Boston Evening 
Transcript (July 29, 1903). 

To appreciate the biographical value of the early es- 
says it must be borne in mind that an account of Pro- 
fessor Royce’s life will probably never be written. Mrs. 
Royce has declared that it was her husband’s wish that 
his personal history. should not be published. He ap- 
peared to have had no taste for those biographies in 
which private fortunes and external circumstances 
form the chief theme. Did he not, as a young author, 
say of the poet Shelley that “the reality and the color- 
ing of ... [his] character we must seek in his works. And 
in his works, too, we must find the inspiring ideas con- 
cerning which he was permitted to speak, and speak 
grandly to his fellowmen”’? Royce’s distaste for con- 
ventional biographies was not strange. It had its roots 
in his philosophical conception of the self. The life of a 
man was for him the life not of his external fortune but 
of his moral achievement. The self he identified, for 
reasons at once practical and metaphysical, with loyal 
endeavor and choice and withactive purposes and ideals. 
Thus man is reflected in his works. It behooves us, 
therefore, to seek Josiah Royce’s own personality in his 
works, to an understanding of which his early essays may 
contribute not a little. For in them are mirrored his in- 
terests and his problems, his temperament and his char- 
acter. The careful reader of the “Fugitive Essays” will 
soon recognize in the young author Royce’s distinctive 
personality. His was a personality that exhibited con- 
tinual growth and development without radical change 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 5 


or deviation from certain well-marked traits. The qual- 
ities which we have come to associate with the mature 
thinker—universality of mind, imaginative insight, wide 
range of interests, skill in subtle analysis, independ- 
ence and originality of thought — predominate in these 
early essays. Here, too, are present the dignity, the 
earnestness, the sincerity, the humility, the reverence, 
so characteristic of all his thinking and writing. And 
here also his perennial sense of humor finds expression. 
It is these qualities which give to Royce’s style unity 
and distinction. This style is indeed far from being uni- 
form. And concerning its literary excellence there may 
be differences of opinion. In moral beauty, however, his 
style is everywhere uniform because he was always him- 
self. He simply could not be trivial. On whatever topic 
he chose to write — on logic or history, on metaphysics 
or psychology, on religion or science — he at once raised 
his subject toa moral height, to an intellectual eminence. 
The only word perhaps which is adequate to describe his 
style is the word nobility. Of this style the “Fugitive 
Essays” are the early and the eloquent witnesses. 

Not his printed works alone but his unpublished writ- 
ings as well — of which a bibliography will be found in 
The Philosophical Review for September, 1917 — mani- 
fest the same qualities of his noble style. We should like 
particularly to direct attention to a Diary which Royce 
kept during the years 1879 and 1880, when most of the 
“Fugitive Essays” were written or conceived. It is a 
valuable document, revealing some characteristic traits 
of his personality, not the least important being an ab- 
sence of introspective analysis. For the most part the 
Diary is a record of intellectual problems, an inner con- 
versation, as it were, carried on with sincere passion, 
about ideas and about books and about plans for liter- 


6 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


ary and philosophic ventures. There is among other 
meditations one which was intended as a sort of Preface 
to a contemplated work on metaphysics. It is the only 
one that may perhaps be called “subjective.” It is dated 
February 12, 1879, and is here inserted, with the kind 
permission of Mrs. Royce, to disclose the temperament 
and the character of the author of the “Fugitive Es- 
says.” And the mood and the spirit which it reflects, are 
they not equally characteristic of the mature Royce? 


“‘MEDITATION BEFORE THE GATE” 


I am a Californian, and day after day, by the order of the 
World Spirit (whose commands we all do ever obey, whether 
we will it or no), I am accustomed to be found at my tasks in a 
certain place that looks down upon the Bay of San Francisco 
and over the same out into the water of the Western Ocean. 
The place is not without beauty, and the prospect is far- 
reaching. Here as I do my work I often find time for contem- 
plation.... 

That one realizes the greatness of the world better when he 
rises a little above the level of the lowlands, and looks upon 
the large landscape beneath, this we all know; and all of us, 
too, must have wondered that a few feet of elevation should 
tend so greatly to change’our feeling toward the universe. 
Moreover the place of which I speak is such as to make one re- 
gret when he considers its loveliness that there are not far 
better eyes beholding it than his own. For could a truly noble 
soul be nourished by the continual sight of the nature that is 
here, such a soul would be not a little enviable. Yet for most 
of us Nature is but a poor teacher. 

Still even to me, she teaches something. The high dark hills 
on the western shore of the Bay, the water at their feet, the 
Golden Gate that breaks through them and opens up to one the 
view of the sea beyond, the smoke-obscured city at the south 
of the Gate, and the barren ranges yet farther to the left, these 
are the permanent background whereon many passing shapes 
of light and shadow, of cloud and storm, of mist and of sunset 
glow are projected as I watch all from my station on the hill- 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION a] 


side. The seasons go by quietly, and without many great 
changes. The darkest days of what we here call winter seem 
always to leave not wholly without brightness one part of the 
sky, that just above the Gate. When the rain storms are 
broken by the fresh breezes from the far-off northern Sierras, 
one sees the departing clouds gather in threatening masses 
about the hilltops, while the Bay spreads out at one’s feet, 
calm and restful after its little hour of tempest. When the 
time of great rains gives place to the showers of early spring 
one scarcely knows which to delight in the more, whether in 
the fair green fields, that slope down gently to the water, or in 
the sky of the west, continually filled with fantastic shapes of 
light and cloud — nor does even our long dry summer, with 
its parched meadows and its daily sea winds leave this spot 
without beauty. The ocean and the Bay are yet there; the 
high hills beyond change not at all for any season; but are ever 
rugged and cold and stern; and the long lines of fog, borne in 
through the Gate or through the depressions of the range, 
stretch out over many miles of country like columns of an in- 
vading host, now shining in innocent whiteness as if their 
mission were but one of love, now becoming dark and dread- 
ful, as when they smother the sun at evening. So, while the 
year goes by, one is never without the companionship of Na- 
ture. And there are heroic deeds done in cloud-land, if one will 
but look forth and see them. 

But I have here . . . to speak not so much of Nature as of 
Life. And I shall undertake to deal with a few problems such 
as are often thought to be metaphysical (whereby one means 
that they are worthless), and are also often quite rightly called 
philosophical (whereby one means that it were the part of 
wisdom to solve them if we could). With these problems I 
shall seek to busy myself earnestly, because that is each one’s 
duty; independently, because I am a Californian, as little 
bound to follow mere tradition as I am liable to find an audi- 
ence by preaching in this wilderness; reverently, because I am 
thinking and writing face to face with a mighty and lovely 
Nature, by the side of whose greatness I am but as a worm. 


This meditation supplies a background not unsuited 
for the early “Fugitive Essays.” It fixes our attention 


8 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


upon Royce the Californian. It reminds us of his early 
environment. If one were to write the “forbidden” 
biography of Josiah Royce, a narrative of his California 
period would form one of its most interesting chapters. 
For it was in California that he was born, and there he 
was bred. Surrounded by pioneers and explorers he 1m- 
bibed their spirit and became himself a pioneer and ex- 
plorer in regions deeper and more fascinating than those 
of gold mines. In philosophy Royce was essentially self- 
taught. There were no regular and systematic courses 
laid out for him at the University of California. His 
autobiographical sketch, the only one we have of him, 
now printed in The Hope of the Great Community, tells us 
how he was forced to find his own way through the mazes 
of philosophic doctrine and theory. This independence 
which the meditation from his Diary singles out as a 
California trait informs the “Fugitive Essays.” They 
are the fruits of lonely and ardent exploration; they 
are the independent labors of a self-conscious Califor- 
nian. 

From the year 1878 to 1882, when these California 
essays were written, Royce taught English at the uni- 
versity of his native state. His pedagogical activities, it 
would seem, coincided thus very little with his specula- 
tive problems. Yet it was not his nature to keep the two 
long asunder. At the outset of his professional career his 
academic interests fused as they later always did with his 
technical speculations. He could not regard the teaching 
of English composition and literature as something di- 
vorced from the deepest and gravest issues of life and of 
thought. The subject of English appeared to him as one 
possessing definiteness and profundity — both of which 
it frequently lacks — for which he sought a solid founda- 
tion. This he found in the study of logic. And with the 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 9 


inventiveness and the independence so characteristic of 
him he wrote and published his Primer of Logical Anal- 
ysis for the Use of Composition Students (San Francisco, 
1881), employing it as text in his classes, we know not 
with what success. Logical thinking, 7. e., orderly think- 
ing, in a severe and rigid sense, seemed to him the most 
natural basis for the writing of English. Thus funda- 
mental was his mode of dealing with English composi- 
tion. No less fundamental was his attitude towards 
English literature. It was neither pedantic nor impres- 
sionistic. His ideas on Literary Criticism, voiced casu- 
ally in “A Neglected Study,” the essay of a later period 
included in the present volume, are already embodied in 
his early literary studies. In the paper in question he 
deprecates the view of literature as the exclusive domain 
of “scholarly” philological “research.” But for the 
“whimsical”’ critic, the “purely literary man,” with his 
“light” and “prophetic” and “phosphorescent literary 
glowing”’ Royce has nothing but scorn. “Is life so very 
light an affair?” he asks. His California essays on litera- 
ture exemplify a different type of Literary Criticism. 
They are profoundly philosophical. They are expres- 
sions of that reflective insight which he later came to 
associate with the activity of “interpretation,” a proc- 
ess of knowledge differing alike from “perception” and 
“conception,” to which we shall presently recur. But 
aside from this, from his earliest utterances Royce ap- 
pears as the champion of the dignity of poetry and as 
the discerner of its deeper worth. Poetry for him is an 
articulate response to the problems of passion and of 
will. In an unfinished revision of “The Decay of Ear- 
nestness”” we find this significant passage: “Literature 
often bears to philosophy in general, and yet oftener to 
Ethical Philosophy, the relation of fountain to stream. 


10 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


What the poet suggests about the meaning and the ob- 
scurity of life, the ethical philosopher makes the subject 
of a formal study. The poet sees a tragedy of destiny; 
and the philosopher makes of it a problem in dialectics, 
where words war instead of souls. Certainly the stream 
in this case rises no higher than the source. No ethical 
system, unless it be the work of a philosopher who is 
himself a poet, will be found to have in it more insight 
into life than poetry has already suggested.” To this 
view of poetry Royce was always faithful. Literary 
values could not for-him be severed from ethical signifi- 
cance. His essays on literature are concerned with 
nothing less than with an evaluation of the “tragedies 
of destiny”’ as seen and felt by the poets. And this 
interest in the wills and the passions of men — and of 
what else does genuine poetry consist? — is thoroughly 
consonant with the spirit of his philosophy. In truth, it 
is one of the deepest and most abiding motives of his 
“Voluntarism.” 

Truly remarkable is the distinctness with which the 
later personality of Josiah Royce speaks to us through 
his early casual essays. And more remarkable still is the 
explicitness with which some of his mature and system- 
atic views are there anticipated. The substance of his 
later teaching seems to have become crystallized at a 
comparatively early stage of his development. It is 
amazing how clearly certain ideas which are character- 
istic of all his later writings are already formulated in the 
“Fugitive Essays.”’ The outline-form of his technical 
system may be traced back to his earliest utterances. In 
what follows the attempt is made to suggest the inti- 
mate relation of his early views to his later works. 
A systematic and minute exposition of Royce’s entire 


philosophy would indeed be required to do this ade- 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION II 


quately. But only a summary statement can here be 
essayed. 

Speaking most generally, his system as embodied in 
The World and the Individual and in The Problem of 
Christianity — his magna opera — is a theme with vari- 
ations. The theme is a theory of knowledge and of 
reality which in its essence is activistic and social. The 
definition of an idea as a “plan of action”’ is, in his 
earlier work, the basis of both his epistemology and his 
metaphysics. To knowis not to copy a so-called external 
reality. Knowledge is a mode of action; it is an active 
search for the fulfillment of purpose. Without purpose 
as basis, the meaning of knowledge, he contends, can be 
made articulate only with the aid of unwarranted as- 
sumptions and glaring contradictions. The alternative 
to a copy-theory is, for Royce, an activistic doctrine of 
knowledge. Reality is indeed external to the knower’s 
momentary purpose. Externality, however, is not alien 
to purpose. It is embedded in its very nature. The pur- 
pose which seeks fulfillment seeks what as yet is other 
than or external to itself. The relation between knowl- 
edge and its object 1s for Royce, in The World and the In- 
dividual, a relation between purpose and fulfillment. 
This results in a definition of reality which is both ob- 
jectve and spiritual. For the real world is simply the 
absolute and complete embodiment of purpose. And 
the proof that an “infinite multitude” results from the 
expression of a “single purpose,” contained in the “‘Sup- 
plementary Essay” to The World and the Individual, 
enables Royce to define the real universe as both single 
and plural. The very unity of the universe, as the ex- 
pression of a single purpose, demands its multiplicity 
and complexity. Royce’s Absolute is preéminently a 
social concept. It is this social character of Royce’s Ab- 


12 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


solute— often overlooked— which distinguishes it from 
the simple and undifferentiated and unutterable One of 
the mystic. The Absolute is defined by Royce as “‘in its 
form inclusive of an infinity of various, but interwoven 
and so of intercommunicating Selves.’’! “Simple unity,” 
he emphatically declares, “is a mere impossibility.” ? 
Unity and multiplicity are for him interdependent con- 
cepts. The Absolute has the unity of a social organism; 
it is the complete integration of a complexity and vari- 
ety of purposes, wills, and ideals. It is but natural that in 
his later formulation the concept Universal Community 
tends to replace the term Absolute. The union of One 
and Many — the heart of Royce’s metaphysics — is de- 
noted more explicitly by the term “Community” than 
by the term “‘Absolute.”” A community, Royce states, 
is “both one and many; and unless it is both one and 
many, it is no community at all.” The community, as 
defined in The Problem of Christianity, is the one indi- 
vidual life of its many individual members precisely in 
the sense in which the Absolute in The World and the 
Individual is interpreted as an “Individual Whole of 
Individual Elements.’”4 

A detailed study of both these major works would un- 
questionably reveal differences as well as similarities. 
But not to regard the “Absolute” of The World and the 
Individual as identical with the “Universal Community” 
of The Problem of Christianity, and vice versa, is seriously 
to misunderstand the main thesis of both works. “This 
essentially social universe,” says Royce himself, “this 
Community ... we have now declared to be real, and to 


’ The World and the Individual, second series, p. 298. 
Bp OAs e588 Le 

3 The Problem of Christianity, vol. ii, p. 17. 

* The World and the Individual, first series, p. 538. 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 13 


be, in fact, the sole and supreme reality, . . . the Abso- 
lute.” ! Again: “The universe, if my thesis is right, is a 
realm which is through and through dominated by social 
categories. ... The system of metaphysics which is 
needed to define the constitution of this world . .. must 
be the generalized theory of an ideal society. Not the 
Self, not the Logos, not the One, and not the Many, but the 
Community will be the ruling category of such a philoso- 
phy.’ * “The universe is a community of interpretation 
whose life comprises and unifies all the social varieties 
and all the social communities. ... The history of the 
universe, the whole order of time, is the history and the 
order and the expression of this Universal Community.” 
That Royce himself viewed his “metaphysics of the 
community” as no radical departure from his previous 
doctrine but rather as a novel formulation of it, is borne 
out by this quotation: “... I still hold by all the essen- 
tial features of . . . [my] former attempts to state the 
case for idealism. But at present I am dealing with the 
World of Interpretation, and with the Metaphysics of 
the Community. This I believe to be simply a new 
mode of approach to the very problems which I have 
formerly discussed.” * But of this important topic we 
reserve for the future a more elaborate discussion. 

The more explicit recognition in his later work of the 
“social”’ constitution of reality leads Royce to a theory 
of knowledge more explicitly “activistic.”’ He calls it 
by the name “‘interpretation.”’ And it is of course more 
than a new name for the former epistemology based 
upon the definition of an idea as a “plan of action.” In 
essence, however, the epistemology defended in The 


1 The Problem of Christianity, vol. i, p. 296. 
2 [bid., p. 281 (italics mine). 
miids, Ds 273: ce IRATE Sup Phe) 


14 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


Problem of Christianity is identical with that formulated 
in The World and the Individual. Just as, in the earlier 
treatise, an idea seeking embodiment or fulfillment can 
find it completely but in an Absolute conceived as a 
social being, so, in his later work, the interpretation of a 
“sign” must generate by virtue of its own nature a 
Community of Interpretation. Details of the doctrine of 
Interpretation — one of Royce’s most original contri- 
butions to philosophy — can not be touched upon here. 
Its activistic and social aspects alone are now pertinent. 
Interpretation is.the expression of a “creative intelli- 
gence’’ — to use a current phrase — and the goal of in- 
terpretation is a Universal Community whose reality 1s 
presupposed in every interpretative act.1. Thus, the 
same theory of knowledge and of reality, activistic and 
social in its very core, is the outcome of both The World 
and the Individual and The Problem of Christianity. 
This inadequate sketch of the main theme of Royce’s 
two great works must suffice for an appreciation of his 
early writings. Central in these writings is the same 
theory of knowledge and of reality. And central it is 
not alone in the technical but also in the general essays. 
The doctrine of the “creative intelligence” now so ar- 
dently proclaimed is no unique product of its recent ex- 
ponents. In the philosophical efforts of the young Royce 
one will find the essential and the enduring truths of this 
doctrine, but linked with ideas strangely at variance with 
those of modern pragmatism. But a few pregnant state- 
ments can here be cited. “Thoughts are not dead and 
finished mind-products,”’ argues the young author in 
“Shelley and the Revolution,” ‘‘that you can lay away 
on a shelf, so as to take them down entire, dry, and 
sound, when you want to use them. Thoughts are liy- 


1 The Problem of Christianity, vol. ii, pp. 253 ff. 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION ius 


ing, and each thought lives in the most literal sense, but 
amoment. You must create your thought afresh when- 
ever you want it.... The essence of thinking 1s origt- 
nality.... Men’s affairs, in so far as they are matters of 
thought ‘at all, are solely what men make them.” The 
same idea is voiced in ““How Beliefs are Made.” “No 
knowledge,” Royce there contends, “.. . without hosp1- 
tality in the minds that receive the knowledge. But as 
soon as we recognize in mental life this our power to 
modify our knowledge by means of our activity, just so 
soon do all the old comparisons of the mind to a wax 
tablet, to a sheet of paper, or to other like passive sub- 
jects of impression lose for us their meaning.... 4/1 
knowing 1S, in a very deep sense, acting; it is, in fact, re- 
acting and creation.’ The most insignificant knowledge 
is in some sense an original product of the man who 
knows.” “Thoughts are always transformed reality, 
never mere copies of reality.” And in “The Nature of 
Voluntary Progress” we read: “Beliefs are always the 
satisfaction of individual wants. No belief can be said 
to be forced upon anyone in any other sense than that 
it is accepted because it satisfies a conscious want.... 
The adjective ‘true’ is applied to a belief by the one 
whose intellectual wants it satisfies, at the time when it 
satisfies them.” 

Many more passages might be quoted, from the gen- 
eral essays alone, to show Royce’s early “Voluntar- 
ism.” But it is significant to note how the “‘activistic”’ 
element of knowledge is intimately bound up with the 
“social.”” The notion of truth as individual satisfaction 
— the essence of a crude pragmatism — is explicitly re- 
jected by Royce. Ashe says in “How Beliefs are Made”’: 
“|. .1n discussing the nature of knowledge, we are tres- 


1 Ttalics mine. 


16 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


passing on the borderland of ethics.” Thinking is indeed 
‘creation,’ creation for the satisfaction of needs, but 
the needs are viewed neither as momentary nor as per- 
sonal. The satisfaction sought is permanent and socially 
significant. ‘What would be the abiding and satisfac- 
tory truth?” — this is the problem with which the 
young Royce is concerned 1n “ Doubting and Working.” 
The aim in seeking for truth, so he there states, is “to 
harmonize the conflicting opinions of men, to substitute 
for the narrowness and instability of personal views... 
broadness of view.” “‘You dare not,” he exclaims, 
“you dare not accept a faith simply for the satisfaction 
it gives you. You dare not, I say, because as a thinker 
your true aim is not to please yourself, but to work for 
the harmonizing views of mankind.... You ought to 
work not to increase the variety of human opinions, to 
render closer the limits of personal experience, but to 
extend the field of harmony and to unite men, so that 
they may cease their endless warfare and have a com- 
mon experience .... What is acceptable to my intel- 
lectual ‘needs .'.". [is not] the truth.” My needsmare 
narrow and changing. It is humanity in its highest de- 
velopment to which the truth will be acceptable. I must 
give up my desires that the unity of all human spirits 
may be sooner attained.” 

Vague indeed is the language in which a superpersonal 
and social standard of truth is here couched. But in the 
phrases “‘a common experience,” “humanity in its 
highest development,” “‘the unity of all human spirits” 
we have in embryo the later social Absolute or the Uni- 
versal Community. The necessity of a superpersonal 
center of reference, essentially social in character, is 
emphasized throughout these essays. ‘“No man liveth 
to himself”’ is the constant refrain. Personal satisfac- 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 17 


tion is nothing, the common social life everything. ‘““The 
world is more than the men in it,”’ Royce says in “Shel- 
ley and the Revolution.” “The total life is something 
more than the sum of its parts.”” And in “The Nature 
of Voluntary Progress”’ the later doctrine of the com- 
munity is distinctly foreshadowed in this passage: “...A 
concert of individual action produces a resultant greater 
than the numerical sum of the individual contributions, 
or else different in kind from this sum. Thus by discus- 
sion and by the aid of tradition, the united effort of men 
produces thoughts which no individual thinking, how- 
ever acute and continued, could ever have evolved. The 
resultant of united political activity is again the state, 
an institution different in kind from the contributions 
brought by any one member of society, whose power is, 
therefore, not the mere arithmetical sum of the powers 
of its subjects, but an organic product of all of them.” 
This anticipates with remarkable lucidity the later 
teaching that a community is a “human being” on a 
higher level. In “Pessimism and Modern Thought” the 
theory of the community is again suggested. Thus: 
“The one goal is the rendering as full and as definite as 
possible all the conscious life that at any one moment 
comes within the circle of our influence. Devotion, then, 
to universal conscious life, is the goal of conscious life 
itself; or the goal is the self-reference or self-surrender of 
each conscious moment to the great whole of life.... Sepa- 
ration from other conscious life means failure. Conscious 
union with other conscious life means for every conscious 
being success.’* Individual life is evil. Life for Self 
must of necessity end in pessimism. And the moral of 
pessimism is simply this: “Expect ... nothing from Self 
1 Cf. The Problem of Christianity, vol. i, pp. 165 ff. 


2 Italics mine. 


18 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


or for Self. Labor to cast Self aside, and to live in the 
universal life. ... Tell [men] that they can find happi- 
ness only when they cease to seek it for themselves. 
Talk no more of golden ages. Talk of golden deeds.” 

The significance of these quotations 1s too obvious to 
require extended comment. They show so clearly the 
trend of Royce’s early thinking. The theoretical and the 
practical interests of man are interpreted in terms of 
principles which indeed only later become definite and 
articulate. In outline, however, these principles are here 
already present. Thinking is an activity devoted to 
universal ends. Life is a task whose meaning consists in 
loyalty to superpersonal ideals. The goal alike of 
thought and of conduct is rooted in a world conceived 
as essentially social. Moral salvation — escape from 
evil — lies in the direction of conscious devotion to the 
universal social order. And through such devotion alone 
does the individual attain dignity and stability. We see 
thus in these general essays distinct indications of 
Royce’s later systematic ideas. 

But the two technical papers included in this volume 
— “On Purpose in Thought” and “Tests of Right and 
Wrong”? — contain more than a mere indication of 
Royce’s later ideas. In these remarkably finished prod- 
ucts of philosophical reasoning the student of Royce will 
find much more than can here be suggested. But cen- 
tral in them are the voluntaristic and social ideas. The 
paper “On Purpose in Thought” deals with the question 
of the final end of purely theoretic thought. Psycho- 
logical and logical analyses fail to reveal an adequate 
aim which thinking may be said to pursue. Another 
mode of approach must be invoked — the “teleologi- 
cal.”’ Various principles, such as uniformity, identity, 
postulated as the “ends” of thought, are analyzed and 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 1g 


their axiomatic character disputed. Only one axiom — 
the “time-axiom”’ — 1s found to be indispensable to 
thought, the axiom that “‘facta cannot become infecta, 
that the past can never be undone. This asserts some- 
thing of the whole future. In all coming time the invio- 
lability of every moment will be secured as soon as the 
moment is past.’’ And the validity of this “time- 
axiom’’ is demonstrated by the method which Royce 
later regarded as securing absoluteness. It 1s the method 
of finding that a true proposition is presupposed by its 
own denial.! This later method 1s explicitly employed in 
proving that the act of conceiving a future, and in con- 
ceiving it in terms of an irrevocable past, is an abso- 
lutely valid act. “The denying,” so Royce says, “of 
the validity of this fundamental act is the assumption 
of its validity,” for “try to assume a condition of things 
in which time has ceased, and you introduce a time- 
element into your assumed condition. Try to conceive 
an end of experience, and you conceive of your experi- 
ence as continuing after it has ceased.” But the notions 
of past and future derived from an analysis of the “time- 
axiom,” and acknowledged to be indispensable to 
thought, are nothing but “constructions” of the activ- 
ity of the present moment. “We always find ourselves 
dealing with a present thought,” Royce asserts, “we 
can never directly know anything but a present thought. 
Past and future, as past and future, are never immedi- 
ately given.... At this moment we project our world- 
picture into an ideal past and an ideal future. The 
present moment is the builder of both the branches of 
the conceived time stream.”’ By the notions of past and 

1 Cf. The World and the Individual, first series, p. 11; cf. 


also “The Principles of Logic” in the volume entitled, The 
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences: Logic, 1913, p. 122. 


20 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


future thus conceived as the product of the present ac- 
tivity of thought, “working upon the data given in the 
present moment of consciousness,” experience is ren- 
dered coherent and significant. “Then experience,” 
continues Royce, “will not appear as an indifferent flux 
of phenomena, which thought follows without any true 
power to anticipate the content of the flux; but, on the 
contrary, whatever notions we have of past and future 
experience will be seen to be the construction of our own 
thought, working upon data immediately given in the 
present.”’ And the.end or the purpose of thought? It is 
simply this: Past and future should be conceived as 
wholes, as standing for one world. Our conception of 
past and future is assumed in order that “the thought of 
the present may have breadth, fullness, and unity, and 
in order that present acts may appear not as sufficient 
unto themselves, but as having an immeasurable import 
in their relation to a whole universe.’”’ “The, present 
and immediately given content of consciousness should 
be found to be ... but a moment in a world of life.” 
Here, in technical form, we have the characteristic 
tenor of Royce’s thinking. The present moment as- 
sumed as alone real reveals itself, once its implications 
are analyzed, as “creative” and “social.” Self-reference 
to a past and a future zot given but actively “‘acknowl- 
edged”’ as real confers meaning upon the “present” 
moment, which must be conceived as standing in rela- 
tion to “a whole universe,” to “a world of life.” In the 
essay of the same year, in “Tests of Right and Wrong,” 
we have a more cogent analysis and application of this 
theory of “‘the present moment.” Here the creative and 
the social aspects of the “‘present” are more clearly 
recognized. And here also is emphasized the union of 
theoretical and practical problems. The problem con- 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 21 


cerning tests of right and wrong is for Royce no mere 
ethical problem, for “the nature of knowledge in gen- 
eral,” as he says, “determines the particular nature of 
ethical knowledge.’’ And knowledge in general is here 
interpreted in Kantian terms. Without data there can 
indeed be no knowledge, but “the datum itself as datum 
cannot carry with it a certificate of objective validity.” 
Objectivity and validity and significance without which 
there can be no real knowledge are products of some 
mental activity. ‘“‘Knowing,”’ Royce here reiterates, 
“as... itself activity ... but if knowledge is activity, 
nobody would call simple knowledge a species of con- 
duct.”’ Conduct is distinguished as activity directed 
towards an end. When we determine to act for an end 
we conceive of possible experiences. The conception of 
possible experience, however, 1s bound up with the con- 
ception of time. The ethical significance of time upon 
which, in his later works, Royce laid so much stress is 
here already made prominent. “The complexity of our 
conduct,” he says, ““is determined by the extent of time 
we take into account. The present moment is given. 
To act with reference to it alone, is not conduct at all... 
Conduct increases in complexity and definiteness ac- 
cording as we act with reference to a more extended 
time, posit a greater past time as real, expect a greater 
future time as yet to come.” What, then, is the test of 
right conduct? Right conduct is determined at each 
moment by explicit reference to the remotest future and 
to the welfare of all conscious life. Consistent conduct 
must at the moment of action theoretically take into 
account a// future time and a// conscious beings. This 
“chronosynoptic”’ and superpersonal standard 1s de- 
rived by Royce from the very nature of the “present” 
moment. For conduct is an activity directed towards an 


api EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


end “‘projected”’ in the future, and since the future is 
not given but “expected,” no particular future moment 
may be logically singled out for preference. “‘No con- 
scious moment,” Royce argues, “is a datum for any 
previous moment, but can only be expected in that mo- 
ment. All future consciousness then, as equally to be 
expected, as equally real when it comes, as equally un- 
real until it comes, is equally an object of present striv- 
ing. Every present act should therefore be ordered for 
the welfare of all future conscious life, in case it should 
be ordered for the welfare of any conscious life at all.” 
Thus the rule for right conduct is found. Moral activity 
being essentially one which transcends the rea/ present 
and being employed in the service of an zdea/ time, must 
avoid what Royce calls the “illusion of time-perspec- 
tive,’ and must regard no particular moment in the 
future as more real than another, since “all future is 
alike not given but only expected, and all is alike real 
when it comes.’” Hence, our conduct must if it be di- 
rected to amy future take into account a// future. On the 
same principle, my moral activity cannot single out my 
future as the goal of its endeavor, since the Ego, as 
Royce declares, “‘is not more a datum than 1s the Alter. 
My future is as much a mere expectation as is your fu- 
ture at thismoment. The reality of the one is the reality 
of the other. Work for one must become work for both, 
or else be indefensible.’ Active extension of my future 
until it embraces the future of all conscious beings is, 
then, the goal of my moral striving. The result is a the- 
oretical solution of the problems of conduct in super- 
personal and social terms. The practical solution, Royce 
himself significantly adds, “belongs perhaps to far-off 
centuries.” 

Irresistible is a comparison between the main trend of 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION oe 


this essay and the later doctrine of the community. In 
the early paper the solution of the moral problem is ac- 
complished through a twofold “extension” on the part 
of the moral agent: temporal and social. The logical 
necessity for such extension is derived from the analysis 
of the “present moment.” If the present alone is given, 
then what is vot present is always a “construction” of 
the present. And since the very essence of conduct, as 
activity for an end, consists in transcending the present 
no limits can logically be assigned to the realm of the 
non-present to be constructed. Whatever is not present 
is ideal. Equally ideal, then, are all past moments and 
all future moments. Equally ideal are Ego and Alter. 
It is the equal “ideality” of past and future, of Ego and 
Alter which logically forbids conduct to act with reter- 
ence to a limited portion of time or to a limited being or 
group of beings. Such limitation would be arbitrary. 
Consistent and defensible conduct, therefore, transcend- 
ing as it must the present, requires reference to a// time 
and to a// beings in time. Thisis the reasoning in ‘Tests 
of Right and Wrong.” Similar is the reasoning in The 
Problem of Christianity. The solution of the moral 
problem consists tor the later Royce also in the twofold 
“extension,” temporal and social, of the individual. 
That the individual self is not a “present datum”’ but an 
“ideal,” the product of an active “construction”’ or, in 
his later terminology, “interpretation,” is one of Royce’s 
cardinal teachings. It.is emphasized over and over 
again. Our idea of the individual self, he says, “is no 
mere present datum, or collection of data.”! Again: 
““Nobody’s self is either a mere datum or an abstract 
conception.” ? “Never in the present life,” so he insists 


1 The Problem of Christianity, vol. 11, p. 43. 
MeL oia palit. 


24 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 
in The World and the Individual, “do we find the self as 


a given and realized fact. It is for us an ideal.” ! Once 
more: “The true self of any individual man is not a 
datum but an ideal.” ? The self of the moment without 
temporal extension has for Royce little meaning. “The 
present self,” he remarks, “the fleeting individual of to- 
day, is a mere gesticulation of a self. The genuine per- 
son lives in the far-off past and future as well as in the 
present.” > “Considered simply in this passing moment 
of my life,”’ so he declares, “I am hardly a self at all.” * 
The same idea is voiced with greater directness in an un- 
published Lecture written in 1915 for a Boston Exten- 
sion course in Ethics. Thus: “There is a most excellent 
reason why you cannot get coherent or satisfactory 
knowledge of the self through any intuition, through any 
direct acquaintance, through any mere hiding away in 
the ‘interior’ of your personality, through any direct 
perception. Your own true self simply does, not just 
now exist to be known. It belongs to the past as well as 
to the present; and your whole life is needed to embody 
and to live out what it means.’ > What, then, is the 
self? It is for Royce a life ““whose unity and connected- 
ness depend upon .. . interpretation of plans, of mem- 
ories, of hopes, and of deeds.’’® Itisa being which never 
exists as a finished product; it is a process which extends 
forward aswell as backward. And no limit, Royce holds, 


! The World and the Individual, second series, p. 290. 

AW REVAAS A 6b) aileto 

3 The Problem of Christianity, vol. 1, p. 67. 

4 Tbid., p. 41. 

® Cf. also article “Mind” in Encyclopedia of Religion and 
Ethics, edited by James Hastings, vol. viii, pp. 649-657; Out- 
lines in Psychology, p. 294; The Philosophy of Loyalty, pp. 
168 ff. 

6 The Problem of Christianity, vol. 11, p. 111. 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION Ms 


can be placed upon the ideal extension of the self in 
time.’ The very life of the self is a process of extension. 
The activity which achieves such self-extension is called 
by Royce “‘interpretation.”” This for him is a cognitive 
process distinct from perception and conception. Data 
are objects of perception; universals objects of concep- 
tion. Objects of a different order, however, called by 
Charles Peirce “signs,” 7. e., signs of meaning, address 
themselves to the third cognitive mode of interpretation. 
Such “‘signs,” for instance, are the past and the future. 
“The time-order,” says Royce, “in its sense and inter- 
connection, is known to us through interpretation, and 
is neither a conceptual nor yet a perceptual order.” ? 
Again, “Our very conception of our temporal experience, 
as of all happenings, is neither a conception nor a per- 
ception, but an interpretation.” * Interpretation, as 
here used, is indeed not identical in detail with the act 
of “acknowledging” the past and “‘anticipating”’ the fu- 
ture as employed in ‘‘Tests of Right and Wrong.” The 
fundamental idea, however, is the same.* In the early 
essays as well as in the later works a definite time-order 
is recognized as the basis for the self and his moral ac- 
tivity, a time-order, moreover, which is not “given” 
but which is “constructed”’ or “interpreted.”” Common 
to the early and to the later Royce is the explicit thesis 
that the self if he is not to shrink into a meaningless 


1 The Problem of Christianity, vol. ii, p.66. * Ibid., p. 155. 

8 [bid., p. 157; cf. also article “Mind,” op. cit. 

4 Cf. the extract from Royce’s Diary on p. 32, where this 
process of regarding each moment or event or fact in reference 
to a postulated class of facts or to a time-stream is character- 
ized as a “‘form of apperception”’ distinct from “comparison 
or association.”” Royce calls it “the form.” It seems as if the 
process of interpretation, in its cognitive aspect, as a distinct 
“form of apperception”’ were here foreshadowed. 


26 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


time-point must actively relate himself to an ideal, 7. e., 
non-given, time-series. That the ideal time-series to 
which the individual must necessarily be related can 
have no personal boundaries is already emphasized in 
“Tests of Right and Wrong.” The self in his extension 
must include all conscious beings. “All future conscious 
life”; “The whole world of future experience”’; “All the 
world of being’? — are some of the expressions which 
there occur denoting the self’s social extension. Of this 
fundamental thought, so persistently held by the young 
Royce, the doctrine of the Community, as formulated 
in The Problem of Christianity, is the mature expres- 
sion. The very essence of the community depends upon 
the power of individual selves to extend their lives with- 
out any definable limit.!. Many selves form one com- 
munity when all are ideally extended so as to include the 
same past and the same future.” The community is made 
possible when each member includes in his own ideally 
extended self the deeds of codperation accomplished by 
the other members.’ But men do not form a community, 
Royce holds, merely in so far as they codperate. They 
form a community “when they not only coéperate, but 
accompany this codperation with that ideal extension of 
the lives of individuals whereby each codperating mem- 
ber says: ‘This activity which we perform together, this 
work of ours, its past, its future, its sequence, its order, 
its sense — all these enter into my own life, and are the 
life of my own self writ large.’”’ * Here we have Royce’s 
later solution of the moral problem. The test of right 
and wrong is defined in terms of “extension.” The final 
result which temporal and social extension is to accom- 
plish is nothing less than the identification of the indi- 


' The Problem of Christianity, vol. ii, p. 61. 
oi bia pea. al ot apo 4 [bid., pp. 85, 86. 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION an 


vidual self with the life of the community. This is the 
goal of our loyal deeds. And this is the aim of our cog- 
nitive endeavors. 

Thus the twofold extension of the individual, tem- 
poral and social, introduced tor the first time in “‘Tests 
of Right and Wrong”’ is at the root of the later notion of 
the community. Not moral “salvation” alone is the 
fruit of ideal extension. Religious and metaphysical 
problems as well find for Royce in such ideal extension 
their solution. And through all his works this solution 
runs like a continuous thread. Of this, however, no more 
can here be said. Yet to one aspect of Royce’s method 
by which such solution is achieved we cannot in this con- 
nection refrain from alluding. It is common to all his 
works, and is already employed with skill in “Tests of 
Right and Wrong.” For want of a better name it may 
be characterized as constructive analysis. Paradoxical 
though it may sound it is logical analysis which pro- 
duces syntheses. Rigid analysis of any idea finds it em- 
bedded in a system of ideas. Philosophical analysis in 
Royce’s use does not tear asunder. It builds. This is 
clearly seen in “Tests of Right and Wrong.” The analy- 
sis of the “present moment” assumed as alone real 
yields a time-order as an ideal construction. Because it 
does transcend the present, and because no theoretical 
justification exists for conferring upon a particular mo- 
ment in the future more reality than upon another, 
moral conduct must choose all future as its standard of 
reference. It must, similarly, take into account all fu- 
ture beings, since no particular being in the future can 
lay claim to more reality than another. The goal of 
moral endeavor becomes thus as a result of progressive 
analysis a whole world of conscious beings in an endless 
time-order. We have seen that this is the Universal 


28 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


Community in embryo. What should now be noted, 
however, is the fact that in The Problem of Christianity 
the notion of an Infinite Community is reached by the 
same mode of creative analysis applied to the process of 
interpretation. When once initiated interpretation, the 
cognitive mode dealing with “signs” or meanings, gen- 
erates by virtue of an analysis of its own nature a com- 
munity having the structure of a determinate infinite.) 
Both the social complexity and the infinity of interpre- 
tation are analytical constructions. The triadic form of 
interpretation, depending as it does upon three terms — 
sign, interpreter, and interpretee — and thus differing 
from perception and conception which are dyadic, de- 
fines for Royce the logical structure of a community. It 
is this triadic structure which constitutes the social basis 
of knowledge. An interpretative act at its very incep- 
tion creates a “community of interpretation.” ? An in- 
terpretation once begun, however, leads to an endless 
wealth of new interpretations. “By itself,’ so Royce 
declares, “the process of interpretation calls, in ideal, 
for an infinite sequence of interpretations.” ? And this 
is no mere assumption. The infinite character of inter- 
pretation is derived from an analysis of its very nature. 
Interpretation being itself a “sign” calls for a fresh in- 
terpretative act, the result of which is in turn a new 
object for still further interpretation, and so on ad in- 
finitum. A Universal Community “whose processes are 
infinite in their temporal varieties” 4 is the ideal goal of 
every interpretation. And this goal is not merely postu- 


‘ Cf. note on “Interpretation as a Self-Representative 
Process,” in The Philosophical Review for May, 1916, pp. 420- 
423. 
2 The Problem of Christianity, vol. ii, pp. 142, 204 fF. 
Ota: SD AULO, Ail ides Daa zA 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 29 


lated but is real, Royce argues, in whatever sense any 
finite interpretation is real. Aside from the epistemo- 
logical and metaphysical issues which Royce’s theory 
of interpretation is designed to meet, here we have the 
latest expression of the same method of creative analysis 
exemplified in “On Purpose in Thought”’ and in “Tests 
of Right and Wrong.” The method by which we know 
is one which secures the progressive expansion of ideas 
through systematic analysis. The “twofold extension”’ 
of which we have spoken, the necessary self-transcend- 
ing and time-transcending activity of every present idea, 
is rooted in the very cognitive process by which ideas 
are apprehended. To apprehend is to interpret. To 
interpret is to advance progressively through “ problem- 
atic situations” in which contrasts and antitheses pre- 
vail to a state of mediation and consequent unity.? The 
task of interpretation is thus socially complex and tem- 
porally endless, demanding over increasing expansion 
and expression — a task for which Royce finds in the 
work of scientific and philosophic communities the 
most potent illustration. 

Interpretation, then, is creative analysis. The method 
which in The Problem of Christianity is used in construct- 
ing the metaphysics of the community is essentially the 
one which in “Tests of Right and Wrong”’ leads to a 
whole world of conscious beings in an endless time-order 
as the moral goal of every “present”? moment. And we 
may remark in passing that constructive analysis is the 
philosophical method which prevails in most of Royce’s 
mature works. Thus in The World and the Individual the 
idealistic definition, or the Fourth Concept, of Reality 
is the result of an exhaustive analysis of what is meant 
by “idea.” In the “Supplementary Essay” to the same 


1 The Problem of Christianity, vol.ii,p.269. *Ibid., pp. 264 ff. 


30 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


work, an “infinite multitude” is analytically developed 
out of “the internal meaning of a single purpose,” } to 
exemplify the social nature of the Absolute. Here with 
the aid of examples drawn from modern mathematics 
and logicwe have perhaps the most technical and yet the 
most lucid vindication of the analytical method as con- 
structive. For the concept of a determinate infinite is 
here viewed as the result of the self-development of 
thought.? Earlier, in The Conception of God, the analy- 
sis of the nature of human ignorance leads to the notion 
of an “‘absolutely organized experience,”’ regarded by 
Royce as identical with the philosophical conception of 
God. Earlier still, in The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 
the rigid analysis of the “possibility of error” termi- 
nates in the constructive conception of Absolute Truth 
as known to an “Infinite Thought.” In all these works 
— whatever their result — the method of argument is 
the same. It is the method of orderly and constructive 
analysis of experience and of thought. 

We have given so much space to a discussion of the 
essay on “Tests of Right and Wrong”’ because here, as 
has been shown, we have in technical form the seeds of 
Royce’s mature teachings. The twofold extension of the 
“present” we regard as the fundamental thesis alike of 
the early and the later philosophical products. The 
present as such is meaningless. The present — be it a 
present moment, a present idea, a present thought, a 
present self — derives its meaning from a constructive 


1 The World and the Individual, first series, pp. 502 ff. 

* Ibid., pp. 492-493. 

3 And it may here be also noted that Royce’s method thus 
suggested is the one which underlies his definition of logic as a 
“Science of Order.” Cf. his “Principles of Logic” in The En- 
cyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences: Logic, 1913. 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 31 


process of self-extension. And the whole technique of 
Royce’s thinking is dominated, as we have seen, by this 
process. It is important, therefore, to glance once more 
at the Diary which he kept during the years 1879 and 
1880, and to observe the persistence with which he pon- 
dered over his theory of the “present moment.” The 
Diary is full of speculations, theoretical and practical, all 
revolving around this theory. But a few extracts can 


here be included. 
April 3, 1879. 
“The New Phenomenology”; Would this title be sacri- 
legious? And this for an opening: “Every man lives in a 
present, and contemplates a past and future. In this con- 
sists his whole life. The future and past are shadows both, 
the present is the only real. Yet in the contemplation of the 
shadows is the real wholly occupied; and without the shad- 
ows the real has for us neither life nor value. No more uni- 
versal fact of consciousness can be mentioned than this fact, 
which therefore deserves a more honorable place in philosophy 
than has been accorded to it. For it is in view of this that all 
men may be said to be in some sense Idealists.”’ 


October 21, 1879. 


Succession in time is an unreality, if by succession is meant 
non-existence of past and future as implied in the existence of 
the present. The truth of succession is this: There exists eter- 
nally among the independent and enduring contents or truth 
certain series of relations known as time-relations. 

The world of being is thus found to be made up of an infinity 
of simultaneous truths; and the way in which one escapes 
from the bondage of the present moment is this: Easy it is for 
the present moment to find itself as alone the real, and to look 
upon past and future as its own creations. They are so, viz., 
its past and its future.... But the present moment in thus 
singling itself out as the one real, fails in its claim for the rea- 
son that it must call itself present. By thus doing it opposes 
itself to a past and a future. Its own reality and truth depend 
upon theirs, as theirs upon itself. Of all the moments this 


ao EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


holds true. All alike are real. All are simultaneous. It is the 
success that is the true illusion. 

There are no atomic beings, no monads in the world. The 
world is an aggregate of simultaneous truths. 


Fuly 25, 1380. 


Very characteristic of human thought it is to regard each 
moment an event or fact in reference to a postulated class of 
facts. So the single event or fact loses its individual character. 
Thus in probabilities, the single event is judged by the type 
(Venn and C. S. Peirce). In all thought the single experience 
is localized in the postulated stream. In Ethics the one act is 
given a worth by the worth of the whole class. The duty of 
voting is a good example. I know that my vote will probably 
determine nothing yet my duty to vote is measured not by the 
probable effect of the act but solely by the importance of the 
issue. Here the individual is exalted far beyond its actual 
rank. Now this familiar process is more than comparison or 
association. It is a form of apperception. One might say, “the 
form.” 

August 20, 1880. 

New in this essay [‘‘Tests of Right and Wrong”’] was the ex- 
plicit statement of my present doctrine of the moral principle, 
a doctrine not very greatly altered from that of the Kant 
Lectures in 1877, but much elaborated, and set in new light by 
the addition of the present moment theory. New in stating 
the theory itself was the use of the terms acknowledgment 
and expectation as names for the attitude towards past and 
future. The names occurred to me as I was walking home from 
B. the other evening. 

August 30, 1880. 

I work on Kant in the evening. I reflect on the analogy be- 
tween Kant’s “Jch denke” and the doctrine of the active 
present moment to which I find myself driven in my efforts to 
understand more problems than one. Kant puts the case thus: 
There is the stream of Vorstellungen. This stream he seems 
tacitly to admit as phenomenally real, even though it were no 
subject of thought, though he does not lay stress upon it as an 
ultimate datum (Shadworth Hodgson does). Yet he seems to 
imply its assumption. In itself, to be sure, the stream is no 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 33 


stream; only the form of our Anschauung makes it seem a 
stream. But whatever it is itself, the stream is real (cf. Kr. d. 
R.V.2 ed., pp. 53,54). Now this stream as real is known first in 
the dnschauung for which it appears as a stream, and secondly 
in thought, through the unity of apperception. The second 
condition need not always be realized, but must always be 
capable of being realized. (Das Ich denke muss alle meine 
Vorstellungen begleiten kénnen.) Otherwise the stream as it is 
in itself, or as it is simply intuited in the form of time, would 
not be my Vorstellungen at all. As thought or known, how- 
ever, through the second condition, the stream becomes the 
basis of all knowledge. 

Now I put the case thus: Given in every case of conscious 
knowledge is the content of a present moment, given as 1n syn- 
thesis, and as a whole. At the same time with this datum there 
is an active conception (acknowledgment or anticipation) of 
past and future contents, not given, but postulated as having 
been, or as yet to be, real. The act of postulating in a single 
moment of consciousness a not given manifold content, 7. e., 
the act of putting this manifold in relation to the one present 
moment, constitutes synthetic knowledge. To conceive of a 
not real ‘knowledge as past or future or possible, 7. ¢., to con- 
ceive of another than the present act of knowledge, one must 
conceive a like activity with other content. To conceive of 
past or future consciousness in which there has been or will be 
no active knowledge, is to disregard the activity of the present 
moment, and to view only the content; postulating that in 
some other moment there was the content without the activity. 
But we cannot conceive the content without conceiving the 
activity as at least possibly present, unless we regard the sup- 
posed content as out of all relation to the present, 7. ¢., as out 
of time. Hence “das Ich denke muss alle meine Vorstellungen 
begleiten kénnen”: or, in other words, all past moments must 
have been possibly knowable as present moments and as in 
the same time-series as that in which the real present actually 
is. The Ich denke = Unity of Apperception = Activity of 


present moment. 


September 4, 1880. 


I see Kant as I never saw him before. But we must put our 


problem differently. Thus says Kant: What is the relation of 


34 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


knowledge to its object? Thus say we: What is the relation 
of every conscious moment to every other? Our question may 
be more fundamental, and can be made so only through study 
of him. 

March ro, 1879. 

Faust’s contract with Mephisto 1s, in Goethe’s view, no ex- 
traordinary act, no great crime, but simply the necessary fun- 
dament of an active life that strives for the Ideal. Here is the 
whole view as I just now conceive it to have been. Im Anfang 
war die Tat, i. e., the essence of life and being is activity. This 
activity is not on the one hand simple blind force (Kraft), nor 
on the other hand pure subjective thought (Sinz) but the liv- 
ing unionof both as seen in the work of the individual moment. 
The Kraft never is known but in the individual Taz: and in this 
individual Tat is contained also the only possible realization 
of the Sinn. And so the essence of life is found in the indi- 
vidual moments of accomplishment, and in those alone. But 
on the other hand, the individual moment is in its inmost na- 
ture unrestful, fleeting. The Kraft is represented in the indi- 
vidual moment, but not adequately. The Sinz is realized, but 
not wholly nor finally. The individual moment is the Real; 
but it is so only in so far forth as it denies itself, strives to pass 
out over itself, to plunge on into a future. Were it content 
with itself, it would be no longer Tat. It would become the 
dead factum, instead of the living Action. Such continual 
striving from one moment to another is the Universe itself. 
The works of creation are glorious because they are in eternal 
movement and action. They are incomprehensible, simply 
because the thought involved in them is never at rest in the 
permanent clearness of the Sinn, but is ever changing with all 
the life of the Kraft. To comprehend (degreifen) would be to 
hold fast. And the life of the individual moment may not be 
thus held fast; but flows eternally. 

The place of man, of the individual consciousness in general, 
is secured, in the midst of this activity, only in and through 
compliance with the general law. The individual moments of 
our lives must be full of action, the fuller the better: but they 
must also be, for the very same reason, full of unrest. No con- 
tent of the moment, however great, must lead us to wish to 
remain stationary in this moment. This content in the present 
moment is denial of activity; it is death. 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 35 


The rest will follow easily; I can better set it forth another 
time. The Act as Act comprehends only itself. All other Acts 
are but phenomena, baseless visions to it. Yet in its discon- 
tent it seeks from the contemplation of them, higher develop- 
ment for itself. And the seeking is contracting with the devil, 
the spirit of deceit, of appearances. The contract with the 
devil is the eternal attendant of the striving of the present 
moment. Life is Action. Passivity, the negative aspect, must 
at every moment be set up and conquered Every moment we 
must enter into contract with the devil; every moment use his 
services for our own development. And when we say “ Ver- 
weile doch”; at that moment the contest is over; the Passive 
has gained its end. We sink into nothing. But the universe, 
with its eternal activity remains. For the individual the pas- 
sive element, whose conquest is his own destruction, appears 
as of its essence diabolical. For the universe this passive ele- 
ment, everywhere present as the reverse of the active, and so 
destructive not of the All but of the Individual, appears as 
Das Ewig-V eibliche. 

Bold, isn’t it? 


These extracts show how central in Royce’s mind was 
the theory of the “present moment.”’ Others speak of 
his project to elaborate and to systematize it. Thus, on 
July 21, 1880, he writes: “Reflected further on the 
present state of the systematic development of philoso- 
phy I am undertaking. The opening and foundation 
thereof is surely the theory of the world of reality as a 
projection from the present moment.” Various plans, 
some of them preserved among his unpublished writings, 
were actually carried out only to be finally rejected. On 
August g, 1880, he records: “Spent the evening on 
my new beginning under changed title ‘The Work of 
Thought.’ When shall I come to the end of these ever- 
lasting beginnings? This one strikes me well. But so, 
alas, did they all.” Yet not many days later, August 
20, we read: “And now my plans have shifted once 
more, and I project for the first book a series of essays, 


36 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 


say five, as thus: I Introductory, ‘The Study of Philoso- 
phy,’ II ‘The Ideas in Themselves (a condensed state- 
ment of the logical theory),! III ‘The Purposes of 
Human Thought,’ IV ‘Tests of Right and Wrong’ (the 
present essay enlarged), V ‘The Business of the Philoso- 
phy of Religion.” This work might be finished before 
long.’ But it was not. It shared the fate of its prede- 
cessors. Hardly begun, it was forced to yield to a new 
plan. Different projects following one another in rapid 
succession are thus found recorded. “I add another to 
the already numberless”’ — is a phrase used in the Diary 
introducing an elaborate sketch of a new plan. 

These “numberless” plans, outlines, sketches, and 
fragments of a systematic book we should have to ex- 
amine with care were it our purpose to reconstruct 
Royce’s mental biography. But this is not the task of 
the present essay. They are here mentioned merely to 
disclose a method of work which was always character- 
istic of Royce, and of which the bibliography of his 
unpublished writings gives abundant evidence. The ten- 
tative attempts to formulate in a variety of ways the 
same thoughts constitute a vast portion of the un- 
printed material he left behind him. Between Royce’s 
manner of work and his philosophical method of “‘con- 
structive analysis”’ there is an interesting psychological 
connection. This, however, we have no room here to 
discuss. This essay, we fear, has already grown beyond 
the customary confines of an Introduction. 

“T strongly feel,’ Royce said in an autobiographical 
mood, “that my deepest motives and problems have 
centered about the idea of the Community, although 
this idea has only come gradually to my clear conscious- 


1 Developed in his Doctor’s Dissertation. — Ed. 


EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 37 


ness.”! His entire system of philosophy is in a sense a 
development of this ruling idea. It is certainly his most 
characteristic and his most persistent theme. In the 
idea of the Community, as he understood it, modern 
thought has received one of its richest philosophic con- 
ceptions. With its aid Royce sought to interpret the 
deepest issues of metaphysics, the profoundest prob- 
lems of knowledge, the ultimate questions of religion. 
And so focal is it in his ethics that, from his point of 
view, the whole moral task of humanity finds in terms 
of the community articulate expression. Thus supreme 
for Royce was the category of the community. Herein 
lies the significance of his “Fugitive Essays.” They 
show how early and how clearly his “deepest motives 
and problems have centered about the idea of the com- 
munity.” 


1 


J. LOEWENBERG. 
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA, 


April, 1920. 


1 The Hope of the Great Community, p. 129. 








FUGITIVE ESSAYS 











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SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 
[1878 | 


T= history of literature is full of philosophic prob- 


lems; no period in it more so than that of the Ger- 

man classical literature. The philosophic problems 
concerned are, indeed, not those of the most purely theo- 
retical interest; they are, on the contrary, the great prac- 
tical problems of life. But their general interest is none 
the less for that reason, as one is easily convinced by a 
very superficial consideration. It is with the philosophic 
problems that engaged the attention of a great literary 
man, the second of the great leaders of the classical lit- 
erature, the popular and much-loved Schiller, that the 
following essay treats. Nota contribution to philosophy 
but only an attempt to aid in the understanding of the 
poet, shall form the substance of our task. It is from an 
age full of outer and inner conflicts that our subject is 
taken. We shall seek to describe only one of the he- 
roes, and him only in respect to one of his great adven- 
tures. 

Schiller is profoundly an ethical poet. Not that he be- 
gan life as a great ethical theorist. On the contrary, his 
early philosophic education was neglected, and until he 
was full thirty years old he knew of the great movements 
of thought of his day only superficially and by hearsay. 
But still, from the ““Ode to Rousseau”’ down to “ Wil- 
liam Tell,” you always find Schiller grappling with some 
problem as to the conduct of life. If he cannot speak the 
language of the school, he speaks his own language, and 
that is commonly much better. If he cannot give a final 
solution for his difficulties, as the schools always do for 
theirs, that only makes his expression more poetic, his 


42 SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 


development freer, and his ideas more life-like. And 
when at last he is brought to spend three or four years 
on abstract, ethical, and esthetic studies, the conse- 
quence is a return with greater vigor than before to the 
work of poetic production, and a daring effort to put all 
the results of his thinking into poetic form, and so to 
make them of worth for real life. From first to last his 
motto seems to be that nothing is too earnest for the 
earnestness of life, and nothing relating to life too bar- 
ren for the transforming hand of poetry. 

Popular instinct has long since recognized this fact of 
the ethical tendency of Schiller. To his own nation he 
appears as the poet of freedom, of ideal aspiration, of 
active striving for the better. The history of literature 
contrasts him with Goethe by making him the represen- 
tative of the element of restless progressive effort in the 
classical period, as Goethe is the representative of the 
element of repose, of trust in nature, of self-surrender to 
life as a process, instead of self-affirmation in life as a 
free construction. No reader can mistake this tendency 
in Schiller. It is the merit, as it is the weakness, of all 
his best work, that it is throughout determined by ideas 
that have relation to action. Whatsoever things are in 
his eyes pure, lovely, of good report — these, and no 
others, he seeks to realize in his poetry. And so, as his 
ethical conceptions develop, his poems develop with 
them. In short, when you study the principles that gov- 
erned Schiller’s thought on practical questions, you en- 
ter at once into the laboratory where his genius worked, 
and witness at least a part of the process, in so far as that 
can be made visible, by which his productions reached 
maturity. And this is the ground of the importance of 
Schiller’s ethical studies in the history of his life and 
works. 


SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 43 


These studies were, as we have indicated, not for the 
first the fruit of an intimate and systematic acquaint- 
ance with philosophy, or with the special branch of it 
concerned. It is much rather true that Schiller finally 
came to busy himself quite systematically with philos- 
ophy because he had first long been an independent 
student of ethical problems, and had been unable to 
solve them satisfactorily. 

In fact, to give a complete account of Schiller’s ethical 
studies one would have to write a running commentary 
on all his works from first to last. And, at the same time, 
to take notice only of those of his writings wherein his 
opinions are stated in technical language, as a result of 
his special studies undertaken at one particular period, 
would be to give a false impression, and substitute only 
a very small part for a whole. We may perhaps avoid 
both errors by briefly sketching Schiller’s development 
up to the time when he felt himself led to a special study 
of philosophy in hope of solving his difficulties and clear- 
ing his ideas on ethical and esthetic problems; by then 
giving some account of this period of theory and its re- 
sults, and by finally indicating the consequences which 
all this had for the poet’s last and greatest period of pro- 
ductive activity. 

The general chronology of Schiller’s life favors such a 
division of the subject. And as this chronology is of some 
importance for the formation of clear ideas as to his 
course of development, I take the liberty of pausing for 
a moment over it. 

Schiller was born November 10, 1759, and died May g, 
1805. A glance at the dates of his works assures one that 
by far the greatest of them belong to the last ten years of 
his life, from the beginning of 1795 on. The philosophic 
lyrics, the mass of the ballads, the dramas from ‘“ Wal- 


44. SCHILLER S\RTHIGAL STUDIES 


’ 


lenstein” to “Tell,”’ the correspondence with Goethe, 
would all have been lost to the world had Schiller’s ill- 
ness of the year 1792 and the following year proved fatal 
—a result which seemed at the time very imminent. 
The works between 1780 and 1795 may, in the next place 
be considered as falling under three periods: that from 
1780 to 1783, inclusive, in which his first dramas, “ Die 
Rauber,” “Fiesco,’ and “‘Kabale und Liebe,’ together 
with the “Odes to Laura,” and a few minor lyrics, fall; 
that from 1784 to 1788, inclusive, a transition period in 
his poetic style, marked principally by “Don Carlos,” 
the tale known as the “Geisterseher,’ and the “ PAzlo- 
sophische Briefe”; and that from 1789 to 1794, the tran- 
sition period in his mental development, in which he 
gives up poetic production almost altogether, and busies 
himself first with history, then with philosophy. Fin- 
ally, in this last-mentioned period, we have, as the sub- 
period of special philosophic study, the years 1791 
to 1794. In these, Schiller busied himself principally 
with the Kantian philosophy, and wrote the well-known 
series of esthetic essays. 

We have, accordingly, first to treat of Schiller’s ethi- 
cal studies, systematic or otherwise, as they find expres- 
sion in his writings previous to the year 1791. We shall 
then be prepared to speak of Schiller the Kantian, from 
the year 1791 to the year 1795, and shall look ahead for 
a single moment at Schiller the classical poet, belonging 
to no school, and in fact to no nation, but to the history 
of the hurnan mind as a whole, and to the literature of 
the world at large. 

An unsolved theoretical problem may be, to a simple 
investigator, a source of pleasure. But an unsolved 
practical problem is to a poet only a cause of trouble. 
In so far as Schiller in his early views on ethical ques- 


SCHIETERISSETHIGAL STUDIES 46 


tions is uncertain, we may expect to find him unhappy. 
And, indeed, when we consider the problems that arouse 
his anxiety, we shall not be astonished. Let us mention 
some of these problems. 

In the first place, then, we find Schiller deeply per- 
plexed by the narrowness, the essential limitation, of all 
human character, knowledge, and attainment. That we 
have desires and powers in themselves perfectly justi- 
fiable, and yet in the nature of things incapable of find- 
ing in the actual world adequate objects — this im- 
presses Schiller as containing a great and intensely 
practical problem in itself. What are we to do with these 
powers and desires? Are they illusions, through which 
nature makes use of us for unknown purposes? And 
must we therefore learn to rise above them, to despise 
them, to become cynics? Or are they not rather indica- 
tions of a high and supernatural vocation of man, whose 
full realization is for the present hindered by powers of 
evil which we cannot understand? If this be the case, 
then do not these powers and desires open up to us the 
means of forming to our minds the ideal of a perfected 
and victorious humanity, an ideal that we may never 
see attained, although our business must be to strive for 
it unceasingly? This is the query of all Schiller’s early 
poetry. As a poet he inclines to the latter solution. 
There is nothing cynical about his true nature. But how 
he shall arrive at such a solution he cannot see; and when 
he writes a confidential letter, or attempts an especially 
mournful or passionate love song, he often tries to con- 
vince other people that he is a cynic after all, that he 
does not believe in the true or 1n the good very seriously, 
and that he should not wonder if the whole turned out 
to be only a figure in the great dance of atoms. He 
quickly recovers in all cases, at least sufficiently to de- 


46 SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 


mand a way out of his difficulties from some one, or to 
dream out one for himself; but nothing can prevent the 
conflict from beginning all over again. 

This difficulty is a very real one for Schiller, and not a 
mere subject for poetic fervor. The circumstances of his 
life have impressed it upon him, and given it a peculiar 
tinge. His youth was not one of freedom, but of bond- 
age ina military school. Even his course of study for his 
profession was, with the profession itself, forced upon 
him. He had no choice. His culture had thus been 
neglected, notwithstanding that his education was in a 
sense quite broad, although not exactly liberal. Sym- 
pathy, too, was lacking. And thus in all directions he 
felt his freedom of movement walled in. To be a citizen 
of the world, to be free, to know no law but what a 
higher consciousness sets for itself — this is the wish 
that breathes everywhere from his early poetic efforts. 

Often the wish is obscurely expressed; often it asks 
simply that indefinite fullness of consciousness, that un- 
ordered overflow of intense feeling, which every one at 
first is apt to conceive as the essential eftect of the beau- 
tiful, and the essential content of higher lite. But, un- 
stable as this view of things is, the poet must pass 
through it on his way to better understanding of his 
task, and in passing he makes this personal problem a 
universal one, and finds unlimited tood tor thought in 
the continual strife in the world between the desire for 
independent activity on the part of the individuals and 
the iron necessity with which mother Nature surrounds 
all her children. As early as in his graduation essay 
(Ueber den Zusammenh. d. thier. Nat. d. Mensch. mit 
seiner geistig) he had given a provisional solution to the 
problem. In this essay the body of man is taken as a 
general representative of the necessity of nature, and 


SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 47 


the soul as the general representative of the desire for 
freedom. The soul is shut up in the body, he reasons, 
because otherwise it could not develop its powers. Hear- 
ing and seeing, moving and constructing — yes, even 
much of thinking — are all obviously determined by the 
body. 

Suppose a newly-created soul set alone by itself, with- 
out any body. It cannot hear nor see, it cannot act, it 
will never find out how to think — in fact, it might as 
well not exist. In short, by this reasoning the young 
surgeon finds it so easy to prove the value of having a 
body that we are almost tempted to ask, What, on this 
basis, may be the use of having a soul? The essay is 
eminently proper, eminently tedious, perhaps not quite 
sincere, but at all events unmistakably materialistic in 
its consequences. Schiller was not conscious of this fact, 
and was, at all events, no materialist at any point of his 
career. The incompleteness and instability of the solu- 
tion he here proposes merely serve to show how far 
Schiller was from the full attainment of his end — the 
end, in fact, he never attained until the day of his death. 
The necessity of nature, which is the unspiritual; the 
needs of the spirit, which seem in this world but acci- 
dental — these are the two members of Schiller’s An- 
tinomy; and Antinomy it always remained, through 
abstract thinking and poetical enthusiasm, down to the 
end of his career. 

The essay we have just mentioned is the first extant 
prose work, if we except “The Robbers” (which, not- 
withstanding the form, must be reckoned as poetry), in 
the course of Schiller’s life as an author. If in its some- 
what dry way it attacks the poet’s pet problems, we may 
accept the fact as a sign that when Schiller writes prose 
again he will not forget to discuss anew the same topics, 


48 SCHILLER SJE THICALSSTUDIES 


and, if he can, in better form. And, accordingly, we find 
further on, in 1786, a series of philosophic letters, in 
which, in the form of a correspondence between two 
friends, the ethical problem is once more taken up and 
its solution sought in an attempt at a poetic scheme of 
the universe. Perhaps these letters may serve best to 
introduce the few words we have to say of Schiller’s 
ethical studies as influencing his poetry in this first 
general period; for the letters are themselves highly 
poetical in their form, and are more systematic than 
any one of the lyrics from near the same time. In fact, 
no better commentary on the “Lied an die Freude™ 
could be found than just these letters. 

The external motive for the writing of the letters was 
the friendship of Schiller and Korner, and the inter- 
course and correspondence that grew out of it. Korner, 
the father of the poet Theodor Korner, who died in the 
Befreiungskrieg, was himself a man of no small talent, 
but more a thinker than he was a writer. His place in 
Schiller’s early development is that of a quiet and kindly 
opposition. When Schiller is in despair, Korner en- 
courages him. When Schiller jumps at conclusions, 
Korner invites him to study philosophy, and trust more 
to his understanding. When Schiller plunges into hard 
study, Korner reminds him of his vocation as a poet. 
And so throughout — with a curious mingling of affec- 
tion, criticism, reverence, advice — Korner gives his 
great friend just the stay the perplexed soul needed. 
The correspondence of the two has long been famous. 
It was natural that Schiller should discourse of his diffi- 
culties concerning the problems of life with his thought- 
ful friend. Korner seems to have been a Kantian from 
the first, and he was not slow in recommending Schiller 
to search for a solution of his difficulties in that philoso- 


SCHILEER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 49 


phy. But only the theoretic part of the system had as 
yet appeared. It was hard reading; Schiller’s philo- 
sophic preparation was imperfect, his interest in his art 
very great, his outward circumstances not entirely satis- 
fying, and his future still doubtful. He felt only the 
need of appealing to some kind of philosophic doctrine 
to escape from the weight of his problems. His reading 
in this direction had been mainly confined to the popular 
philosophy of the 4ufkérungs-periode. With wonderful 
intuition he had seized on just the points that were fit- 
ting for a general doctrine of nature such as he sought, 
and now he made use of this material as a basis on which 
he might build his own speculation. This is the way in 
which the “ Philosophische Briefe’ originated. 

The “Letters” are, as said, supposed to pass between 
two friends. Julius and Raphael are the names — Julius 
representing Schiller himself; Raphael, Korner. In fact, 
Korner is in part the author of the letters of Raphael. 
The form is in itself significant. At this time Schiller 
hopes to find in friendship the concrete solution of the 
ethical problem. This problem was: How shall man, 
who aspires to something incomparably higher and 
nobler than nature, be able to exist and develop in a 
world where he is cramped everywhere by iron laws of 
necessity, laws that are totally indifferent to his aspira- 
tions? Schiller hopes to find this as the answer: Man 
must become happy by making himself a friend to a 
fellowman — by loving and being loved; for in friend- 
ship there is combined utter surrender of self to a foreign 
power — utter abandonment of self to a need of nature 
—and yet at the same time the highest freedom, the 
completest self-consciousness. 

Julius finds himself full of doubts as to the nature and 
government of the world just at the point where he most 


50 SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 


needs assurance. For he is likewise in doubt as to the 
vocation of man; and how shall his doubts be put away 
if he cannot tell whence man came, nor whither he goes? 
Reason were a glorious treasure, he says, if it only might 
reveal to us something. But this god is put into a world 
of worms. The body with its needs is there; nature with 
its rigid regularity hems in the aspiring spirit. The 
vasty deeps of space are open to the mind; immeasur- 
able spheres of activity seem offered — only that the 
mind may not think two ideas at once, nor have any 
certainty as to present, past, or future at any time. This 
is the most terrible of imprisonments; and that soul 
seems happier that never attains the knowledge of its 
imperfection, but remains for all life in the stolid indif- 
ference of ignorance. 

This is the dark side of the picture. But Julius sees 
one hope of escape. What if this iron necessity of na- 
ture be itself but an illusion, and the free aspiration of 
the spirit be the reality? If there must be illusions 
somewhere, why not on the side of the party of evil? 
Perhaps, then, if we give free rein to fancy and con- 
struct for ourselves the picture of the best possible 
world, we may in the end be able to show that our real 
world does not differ so much from this picture after 
all. 

Here is the starting point for Julius as Natur-philo- 
soph, or, as he seems to prefer to be called, Theosoph. 
We cannot follow him into details. Suffice it to indicate 
the direction his thought takes. A world wherein the 
ordering of nature is to be in radical union with the aspi- 
rations of the spirit must be a world of love. Only by 
this means can the desire for individual freedom be 
reconciled with the bowing before external power, viz., 
when the individual feels himself united to the whole by 


SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES si 


the bonds of all-embracing affection. The feeling that 
links heart to heart in sympathy must be the principle 
that moves all things; otherwise, nature is a dead mass 
tous. God must, therefore, be the highest expression of 
this principle of love, and all the world must have been 
created by Him simply for the sake of realizing in all its 
infinite modifications the one idea of love. And in this 
world our duty, our highest vocation, must be the inten- 
sifying and increasing of the human affections with 
which we are endowed. Towards all mankind, brotherly 
love; towards our friends, the most perfect self-sacrifice; 
towards the ideal of love, worship — such is the whole 
duty of man. 

Julius finds it easy enough to postulate this theory. 
He is sadly at loss for means to prove it. He can at best 
say only that the world ought to be at least as good as 
the thought of one poor mortal like himself. And 
Raphael offers no better consolation than that Julius 
should wait for more light, and study up “the limits of 
human reason”’; by which, of course, our prosaic friend 
Korner means nothing more or less than the “ Kritzk d. 
reinen Vernunft.” 

Such is the main content of the “ Philosophische 
Briefe,’ which remain after all only a fragment, but 
which are very suggestive of the inner life of our poet. 
It is obvious what must be the consequence as to his 
poetic productions in general during this period. If his 
ethical ideas govern his poetry, you must find, these 
ideas being what they are, a double tendency, producing 
two classes of poems. Is the poet chiefly occupied with 
the nobility of the higher affections, is he thinking of the 
worth of friendship and love of humanity — then the 
difficulties suggested by the dead mass of nature will be 
pushed into the background; the poet will see only the 


co SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 


bright side; he will extol duty as the mere natural out- 
burst of affection; he will vivify nature itself, and see 
love and harmony everywhere. Such a mood gives birth 
actually to the early lyric, “Die Freundschaft,” and later 
to the “4n die Freude.”’ In the first occurs that famous 
apotheosis of friendship, which is, no doubt, the finest 
triumph of Schiller’s genius to be found in the “ 4nthol- 
ogie,”’ or in the other productions of the same time. The 
second needs no special reference. Critics may, indeed, 
say that the “4 die Freude”’ is not a perfect poem, and 
that the effect is a little disordered. That, however, does 
not touch the fact that it is a very great poem, and that 
the effect is incomparable. 

But is the poet more vividly conscious of the oppres- 
sion of the order of nature, more attentive to the limits 
of consciousness, then the ethical tragedy, in which 
Schiller from first to last excelled, comes into the fore- 
ground — the world becomes a prison, nature a myster1- 
ous and cruel divinity, duty an external and inimical 
power; while love, the one saving feature of the whole, 
sinks into an accidental subjective phenomenon, beau- 
tiful but powerless. Only the poet’s earnestness and 
manliness prevent him in these cases from becoming 
sentimental and tiring the reader with weak complaints. 
The examples of this style of poetry are, in this first 
period, common enough. In so far as the play of “The 
Robbers” has any plan at all, it rests on this idea. The 
original design of “Don Carlos” was the representation 
on the stage of poor, lonely love in a world of foes, rush- 
ing through life in an agony of passion, and finding 
destruction in the end — a sentimental design, indeed, 
and altered to answer the needs of the poet himself, who 
was in reality made of much better stuff than would be 
indicated by such a picture. The lyric “Resignation”’ is 


SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 53 


another variation of the same theme — the conscious 
spirit crushed before unconscious necessity, and only 
comforted by the thought that everybody else fares about 
as badly (“Mit gleicher Liebe lieb’ ich meine Kinder’’). 
The original form of the “Goétter Griechenlands”’ contains 
a few especially fiery stanzas, wherein the poet expresses 
his opinion of the order of nature while pretending to 
believe that it was not always so bad, and praising a 
mythical antiquity. The most outspoken of these stanzas 
were afterwards omitted. 

Here, then, is an inner contradiction — a stubborn, 
insoluble residuum, as it were — in all Schiller’s early 
thinking and constructing. If his ethical postulates are 
to be satisfied, he must be permitted to idealize the doc- 
trine of nature. But if nature is stubborn, if she refuses 
to reveal to him anything but eyeless law — necessity 
that swerves from its course for the sake of no aspiration 
or demand or need of the individual — then the ethical 
postulates remain unsatisfied, the moral law is a heavy 
load, poetic idealism is but idle fancy. 

From this standpoint there remain for Schiller but 
two provinces free to a greater or less degree from the 
burden of this perplexity. The one province is that of 
simple action. Man may work with ideal purpose so 
long as he lives; this, at least, the iron necessity of na- 
ture permits. And so long as one is hard at work, he is 
excused from answering abstruse questions. This spirit, 
the solvitur ambulando of modern thought and life in 
general, is characteristic of Schiller’s own laborious 
effort through his whole career. The other province 
where a partial reconciliation of necessity and freedom 
may be sought is that of political development. Man 
makes the State, thinks Schiller; therefore the State is, 
as a free construction, to a certain extent removed from 


54 SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 


the interference of dead nature. Here may be room for 
ideal energy, and here the ethical vocation of man may 
be in part realized. Schiller’s thoughts on this subject 
are put into the mouth of the Marquis Posa, a character 
who is indeed, with all his nobility, a kind of filibuster, 
and whose advent in Schiller’s brain during the compo- 
sition of “Don Carlos”’ was the cause of a general revo- 
lution in the ordering of that drama — quite as great as 
the revolution caused in King Philip’s court when the 
marquis appears on the scene. But he is an honest 
character, although fantastic; and his political idealism 
is the true expression of the attempt Schiller made to 
solve his ethical problem by considering the greater 
man of Plato’s Republic, the State. It was the Schiller 
of the time we are now describing who hailed with hope 
the commencement of the French Revolution, just as it 
was Schiller the Kantian who lived to lament the bitter 
disappointment of these hopes. 

The substance of all the foregoing is that the Schiller 
of the first period is not a nature-poet, and must not be 
judged as one. His sympathy with nature is, in fact, 
not developed; and if it were, he would not know what 
to do with it. He sees in nature a great display of forces, 
but does not pause much over the beauty or the signifi- 
cance of single features. He is too deeply troubled by 
unrest to be contemplative, too much in doubt to be 
submissive; and the reflective nature-poet could in 
modern times hardly succeed without one of these qual- 
ities. The Schiller of the “Spaztergang”’ is still far away, 
arid years of progress come between. And yet, as we 
shall see, the Schiller of the “Spaziergang”’ himself was 
only half a nature-poet. The problems of this first period 
remained always in part unsolved. 

The study of the antique clas.ical models from 1788 


SURIUEE RS SE THICA STUDIES 55 


on — a study which did so much to perfect Schiller’s 
style — did not assist him in his ethical difficulties. The 
study of history only made the material of facts, on 
which his doubts were founded, greater. He appealed 
to the reigning philosophy for aid, and in 1791 com- 
menced the study of Kant. 

What Kant was to that age it is difficult for us fully to 
appreciate. His friends and foes came together into 
parties each of which combined many very heterogen- 
eous elements. We find it thus very hard to say just 
what the early Kantians were in tendency — what they 
consciously meant as a body. Somewhat similar was 
this critical movement in its external character to that 
originating under the stimulus of Darwin’s Origin of 
Species today — a similar combination, that is, of the 
most devotedly scientific and the most unfeignedly pop- 
ular features of the thought of the time. But such a 
comparison is necessarily imperfect. Suffice it for our 
purpose that the Critique of Pure Reason was then read 
or read of by everybody who made any pretensions to 
keeping pace with the thought of the age, that every 
one had an opinion of its merits, that many were confi- 
dent of great revolutions of thought to spring from it. 
Schiller had long heard of the book, had long been ad- 
vised to read it, had often been frightened from it, and 
now determined to approach it. He approached it, how- 
ever, carefully, by first reading the “ Krittk d. Urthetls- 
kraft,’ Kant’s systematic treatise on esthetics and 
connected subjects. A poet could not have chosen a 
better means of becoming acquainted with Kant, for the 
“ Kritik d. Urtheilskraft”’ is truly as entertaining a book 
as the sage of Konigsberg was capable of writing. 
Schiller followed this up by reading Kant’s principal 
ethical treatises and essays, in so far as they had yet 


56 SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 


appeared. The results of his study in this province will 
interest us here. 

Kant’s philosophy is a glorification, not of self, but 
of Consciousness. In Consciousness is all knowledge 
rooted; through Consciousness 1s all truth known. This 
is the starting point. To conceive of the universe in 
part, or as a whole, is an act of Consciousness. To judge 
the truth or falsity of your conception is to judge Con- 
sciousness. But this consciousness is not the mere dis- 
ordered mass of sensation — it is the result of formally 
ordered sensation, of organized experience; and this, in 
its completest phase, is called science. The rules by 
which experience is ordered are the special property of 
Consciousness; without them it would not be conscious- 
ness. The Experience is the raw material that is to be 
organized. This is, in a word, the Kantian Theory of 
Knowledge. His Ethical Theory has a like basis. 
Nothing can be a rule of conduct that does not com- 
mend itself as such to Consciousness. If such a rule does 
commend itself to Consciousness as the one right one, 
then it ought to be followed, and the Ought remains eter- 
nally binding, no matter whether the rule actually ever 
is followed or not. Kant’s deduction of the principles of 
conduct does not here concern us. Our business is only 
with the application of this foundation-maxim to the 
doctrine of the Ideal and Real as subjects of practical 
interest. 

Suppose the demands of your moral consciousness are 
not realized in the world. Suppose the Ought of your 
ethical postulate finds no actual fact to correspond with 
it. What refuge have you from endless perplexity at the 
course of events? You have, says the unshaken advo- 
cate of the rights of consciousness, you have even the 
Ethical Idea itself. Consciousness, as represented in the 


SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 7 


Practical Reason, is the support for this Idea, which 1s 
for that very reason judged better than the actual world 
in which it fails to find its realization. Accept this Idea 
for its true worth; be free from the bondage that de- 
pends on the sense, instead of on the moral conscious- 
ness, tor the fulfillment of the latter’s demands; be an 
ethical, and not a sensual, being. 

In this direction these seek for the solution of the 
problem of Ideal and Real. The Ideal is that which 1s in 
conformity with your highest moral demands. Does it 
lie within your own power to make this Ideal an actual 
fact — then work for this end. But, is the realization 
beyond your power, and is the Real of Nature opposed 
to your Ideal, then your duty lies in independence. The 
reason in that case judges, postulates, examines, but 
never departs from its confidence in its own fixed prin- 
ciples. In these it finds a satisfaction that is greater 
than the disappointment; for it recognizes its own in- 
comparable superiority amid the confusion about it. 

The interest that all this must have had for Schiller’s 
problems is evident. Especially, however, must he have 
been struck by one feature of Kant’s theory. The rights 
of the moral Reason are asserted as against the simply 
arbitrary play of fancy, as well as against the extrava- 
gant discontent of the disappointed senses. Not merely 
must you find a higher satisfaction in the possession of 
the ethical ideas, whether or not they be found realized 
in the actual world, but you must also not try to substi- 
tute tor this higher satisfaction any mere appeal to the 
fancy to solve the world-problem by imagining a world 
behind the one we see, like it in being a world of sense, 
but unlike it in being a perfectly good and happy world. 
In other words, all such attempts as Schiller’s own un- 
dertaking in the “Philosophische Briefe,” to make the 


58 SCHILIEER S3BLTHICGAT TS TWIDIES® 


world more tolerable to a poet by fancying that it is all 
an illusion, covering up a goodly, poetic, fair, and free 
world behind the scenes, are, according to Kant, unsatis- 
factory. The poet’s constructions are judged on esthetic 
grounds; but the philosopher must be condemned if he 
has not held to reality, however unwelcome it be. The 
Reason needs no such support. It needs only confidence 
in itself. It does not ask to make a world out of mist, to 
correct this one that is made out of rock. No! The 
Reason is destined for a higher object. It is destined as 
the judge of all things. 

The vocation of man is, therefore, the strictest obedi- 
ence to the moral law, without regard to any hope he 
may have or not have of seeing all its precepts ideally 
realized. And the true equilibrium of life is attained 
when the Reason that supports the moral law has come 
fully to realize its own complete self-sufficiency, and to 
cease despairing of its own worth if it finds that it is not 
able to govern the course of outer Nature. So much, 
then, in general, for the inner contradictions of life which 
had so long oppressed Schiller’s mind. If this treatment 
of them did not remove them, it at least opened a way 
towards rising above them. But, in particular, as to the 
content of these contradictions: Schiller had looked upon 
the iron necessity of nature as a power opposed to the 
desires and aspirations of the individual, and had found 
in this the ground of all the perplexities of life. What is 
the sense of Kant on this point? It is this: Instead of 
calling Nature, where it seems to oppose the realization 
of the moral needs of man, a non-ethical and inimical 
power, it were better to call it an obstacle, to all intents 
and purposes accidental in relation to the Reason. Rea- 
son does not see in Nature an enemy, but simply an un- 
formed material that needs a transforming hand. That 


SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 59 


Nature does not produce ready-made statues does not 
arise from the opposition in Nature to the realization of 
the beautiful. It is simply the result of the fact that any 
agreement of Nature’s rock-forms with the demands of 
the sculptor is a pure accident for the sculptor himself. 
His duty is, not to go statue-hunting through the moun- 
tains, but to take suitable material and make statues. 
The vocation of man is not to be found in the world 
merely, but it is to be realized by labor. 

Such is the character of the Kantian Ethical doctrines 
in so far as we here have to deal with them. Schiller 
could not fail to be deeply influenced by them. They 
transformed him, in fact, from the hesitating, uncertain, 
despondent poet of the first period to the great Idealist 
of the classical time. They did not ever entirely conquer 
his former difficulties, but they brought him to the stage 
at which difficulties become incentives to earnest labor 
— not insurmountable barriers that terrify. They never 
entirely reconciled him with Nature, but they caused 
him to come nearer to her, and learn more from her. 
They did not make him contented with life, but they 
rendered his discontent a healthy, and not a morbid, one. 

To determine how much external influences had to do 
with this change in Schiller, to follow the interaction be- 
tween the philosophical and the literary elements in the 
life of a man who was studying Kant and the antique at 
the same time, to calculate the effect of the historical 
studies on the author of the “Netherlands” and of the 
“Thirty Years’ War’ — all this, in itself an interesting 
task indeed, must be excluded from the present discus- 
sion. We can only, in conclusion, mention a few of the 
most prominent of the results of the study of the Kan- 
tian Ethics as these appear in Schiller’s works them- 

selves. 


60 SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 


The conception of Nature and of its relation to the 
poet — this, we have said, is changed for Schiller from 
this time on. How changed? In the three principle 
zesthetic essays you find a view of Nature in many re- 
spects peculiar. This view is foreshadowed as early as 
1789, in “ Die Kistler.” It is most fully expressed later, 
in the “Spaziergang.”’ Its development belongs to the 
era of the Kant-studies. This view 1s briefly expressed 
thus: Nature is the idyllic state of zaive perfection from 
which man starts. It is the ideal state of conscious per- 
fection to which man must finally return. The object of 
culture is to make man in the full exercise of free choice 
become that which nature in the simple necessity of her 
own methods originally produces. What has this view 
in common with the previous one — the view that found 
Nature an iron necessity that oppresses man? How 
comes one from the other? In answer to this question 
we must of course not hope to go too far beyond the fact 
itself of the change. The simple truth 1s that, be it be- 
cause of happier circumstances, or because of the grad- 
ual growth of the intimacy with Goethe, or by means of 
the study of the Greek poets — be it from any or all of 
these causes, Schiller had come to appreciate and enjoy 
nature-beauty more. This we must accept as truth, and 
question no further as to means. But the ethical studies 
now united themselves with this change of mood. The 
restless fantasy had previously complained of nature as 
an enemy, where she did not satisfy poetic needs. The 
more carefully trained judgment now is willing to let 
nature pass wherever she does not agree with the moral 
demands, to avoid her instead of reproaching her. But 
where she does conform to the ethical postulates, where 
in her simplicity and necessity she finds time also for 
excellence, here the ripened receptivity, the newly- 


SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 61 


developed submissiveness of the poet, is now ready to 
accept and to rejoice; and in these particulars is nature 
set up as a model for man, that she may shame his 
bungling intelligence with her unconscious skill. 

Had Schiller been able to rest here, he would have be- 
come a nature-poet, like Goethe; but he would have 
suffered by the comparison. He had not been at school 
under the great teacher very long — while Goethe was 
her well-beloved child. But the ethical earnestness does 
not suffer our poet to rest at this point. The worth of 
Nature is now understood; but the problem as to Man 
—what form shall he give that? Old questions are 
aroused afresh here, and the awakening love of nature 
is disturbed by elements that forever keep it from be- 
coming entirely pure or completely independent. The 
old opposition between the conscious effort and the un- 
conscious power that limits effort is transferred to the 
sphere of consciousness itself, under the Kantian influ- 
ence; and now we hear of the strife between the ethical 
tendency, which seeks harmony of spiritual life under 
the moral law, and the tendency of the senses, which 
introduces distraction continually. The presence of this 
strife, which the poet never succeeds in stilling or in 
reconciling with higher demands, casts a melancholy 
shadow over the whole of the classical period, and is the 
feature in it that corresponds to the discontented mur- 
muring of the first period. 

Something of the influence of Fichte, with whom 
Schiller was for some time in companionship, is seen in 
the “ Briefe tiber die dsthetische Erziehung,” in which this 
matter is for the first time discussed at length. There is 
the same sharp contrast between the person and its 
rights and the distracting influence of the senses and 
desires, the same demand for a self-assertion which shall 


62 SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 


bring unity into the infinite diversity of life, the same 
despair of any final attainment of the harmony desired, 
the same heroic determination to enter the conflict, to 
work for the goal, though complete victory be infinitely 
removed, which are found in the works of the author of 
the “Vorlesungen iiber die Bestimmung d. Gelehrten” and 
of the “Wissenschaftslehre.” But, as Schiller was a poet, 
and not always in the heroic mood, the joy of the warrior 
in the conflict is not always to be found in what hewrites, 
and simple progress without hope of completion is often 
a wearisome enough prospect to his mind. 

In one of the well-known lyrics he describes himself as 
a pilgrim who has been seeking for the place where “The 
earthly shall become heavenly, eternal”; long he has 
wandered from his father’s house, night and day he has 
not stood still, but yet heaven ever remains far above — 
never touches earth; death is coming fast; he is past the 
age where he can hope for great changes; the stream 
bears him away; his Ideal can never be found — das 
Dort ist niemals hier. In the “Ideale,” written as early _ 
as 1795, he even represents himself as deserted by his 
enthusiasm for a better life, deserted by everything but 
memory and friendship and the power to work. And 
again and again you find the same complaint, all through 
the classical period. The individual limits are recog- 
nized as inherent to the individual life. Nature is not 
blamed for them as she once was; but none the less are 
they limits. 

The enthusiastic spirit often returns. The hand that 
wrote the “4n die Freude” in 1785, can in 1795 pen 
“Das Reich der Schatten,’ or, as we know it now, “Das 
Ideal und das Leben.” Here the soul is to become a con- 
quering Hercules; to forget its limits, and so to destroy 
them for consciousness; to rise in contempt above the 


SCHITEER'S ETHICGARTSTUDIES 63 


incomplete actuality; to storm heaven, and find — 
what? Oh! the nectar of Jove, the Truth, the timeless 
and spaceless Eternal, and what not — in short, the 
Indescribable. Here the poet’s strong inspiration fails; 
one moment of sublime enthusiasm, one glimpse of a 
most excellent glory, and he is on earth again; he has 
tried to transcend the limits inherent in all individual 
life, and he has attained something too much like death 
to be an object on which our thoughts can long dwell 
without a chill. The first breath of the night-wind of 
Romanticism has touched the classic fields, and the 
“Hymns to the Night,” the ‘“Fate-Tragedies,” the 
“Epilogue in Heaven” of the Second Part of Faust 
must all follow in their due course. The Classical spirit 
might have endured longer could it have but answered 
its own questions as to the vocation of man. 

But the field of actual striving life — here is hope for 
something, is there not? Yes, but not for any complete 
satisfaction. In the “Spaziergang”’ you have the whole 
story told in brief form. The best that man has done is 
worse than the fair nature he has departed from in doing 
it. Culture has given birth to luxury, to fraud, to anar- 
chy. Against your will you must recognize the superi- 
ority of Nature, and look in her for the accidental 
realization of the good you so long to see freely realized 
in man. Human history seems like a bad dream, and the 
poet can only comfort himself by looking up to the rocky 
hills, untouched by builder’s hand, and thinking: Here 
is, still, material. There is hope yet, for all is not behind 
us; something remains to be done. The same mingling 
of earnestness in labor and melancholy in reflection per- 
vades the whole of the “‘Song of the Bell.’”’ Political life 
is, indeed, not a subject for hope, thinks our poet, in so 
far as relates to the near future. There is no Marquis 


64 SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 


Posa for the French Revolution. But in the community, 
in the life among small bodies of men, there is interest 
and hope. For the great people, you must look far 
ahead. Let Reformation begin at home. 

We have followed our poet as far as we proposed to do 
at the outset. And here we must take leave of him. To 
sum up in briefest form the results, we have found 
Schiller busied in his first period with the problem of the 
relation of man to nature; in the second, with the rela- 
tion of the actual man to the ideal man. Both problems 
are ethical; both, in reality, but different aspects of the 
same problem — that of the vocation of man. All our 
author’s poetic productions are more or less tinged with 
the ethical element — all, therefore, more or less con- 
ditioned by the understanding he may have of his prob- 
lem. In the first period Schiller doubts the possibility 
of a reconciliation with nature; in the second, the possi- 
bility of attaining the harmony of life. The first doubt 
lost its significance when the poet became a follower of 
Kant; the second remained with him till death. The 
first was the stepping-stone to his classical poetry; the 
second gave the signal for the commencement of the 
romantic school in literature. “‘The Robbers,” in which 
the first tendency received its expression, was the last 
great work of the Sturm und Drang period. “Die Braut 
von Messina,” wherein the second tendency dominates 
all, wherein it becomes the foundation for a vague terror 
in view of all life and all action, and seeks refuge in mysti- 
cism, is the first of the Schicksals-tragidien. With any 
general judgment of an esthetic nature on Schiller’s 
whole career we have not here to do, and it would be 
useless to discuss what time has already settled. But 
one cannot help expressing a genuine admiration for the 
equipoise, the personal power, of the man who could so 


SCHILLER’S ETHICAL STUDIES 65 


deeply feel the force of the problematic side of human 
life, and yet never give way to Weltschmerz; who could 
endure so many conflicts, and yet win for himself the 
honors of a classical poet. All is not conquest in the 
great idealist’s life history; all is not repose and perfec- 
tion in his view of life. But is this so sad a failing? If it 
is, let him for whom life has no problems yet unsolved 
sound the first complaint. 


SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION 
[ 1880 | 


HELLEY?’S life is known to us as yet only in frag- 
S ments. Motives of delicacy and of family pride 

unite to keep the materials locked up, that, if pub- 
lished, would answer very important questions. Mean- 
while the literature about the poet’s fortunes and acts is 
large and unsatisfactory. To go among his biographers, 
who together fill along library shelf, and to ask them for 
help in understanding him, is to enter a company of cul- 
tured and critical people who are all talking among 
themselves in low whispers, and, withal, quarreling. 
You may admire their enthusiasm, but they do not and 
cannot put your mind at rest. Furthermore, you are a 
little saddened to see how they hate one another. Each 
abuses at least one of his fellows, and all mystify. “If,” 
says each, “if I were permitted to state my source of in- 
formation, I could show that the real meaning of this or 
that event is quite other than the stupid and unworthy 
soul of my colleague, A. B., has held it to be.” “I am 
informed by a person well qualified to judge, that,” etc. 
Or, “Certain indications, which it were not prudent to 
explain at present, lead me to a grave suspicion just 
here, a suspicion, however, that I will not more clearly 
define, but only say that I have it. People of insight will 
followme. I care for no others.”’ Such is the tone of your 
true Shelley biographer. Exceptions to the rule there 
doubtless are. Two later biographers, Mr. W. M. Ros- 
setti and Mr. J. A. Symonds, are tolerably plain spoken 
and satisfying, Mr. Symonds especially so. Yet they are 
limited by their material. They can not alter the fact 
that those who are best able to give us the truth about 


SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION = 67 


Shelley at first hand have not seen fit to do so, and that 
the tea-pot ocean of anecdote concerning our poet is yet 
ever liable to convulsive tempests of angry argument, 
whenever any new investigator sees fit to hunt up for us 
some scrap of news, and another investigator to abuse 
the first for doing so or for failing to add something else. 
Of this the moral is that we can not from Shelley’s bi- 
ography gain very much aid in understanding him as a 
man. Important it is to know about his life what we do; 
yet, with the rude sketch in black and white that is thus 
furnished, no one can be for a moment content. The 
reality and the coloring of our Shelley’s character we 
must seek in his works. And in his works, too, we must 
find the inspiring ideas concerning which he was per- 
mitted to speak, and speak grandly to his fellowmen. 
With these ideas, and not with the outward embodiment 
of them in the wondrous and obscure happenings of the 
poet’s life on the earth, our business must chiefly be 
whenever we speak in earnest and with genuine purpose 
about the poet Shelley. 

Shelley must be viewed from as many sides as any 
mountain peak. I choose for the present to consider his 
place in the great mountain chain or range of his age, an 
age as full of great and of small things, of beautiful and 
of terrible things, as ever were Ural Mountains or Sierra, 
Andes or Himalaya. Shelley is a poet of the age of the 
Revolution. To this age we still belong. Do or say or 
think what we will, the Revolution — political, social, 
moral, religious, philosophical, poetical — is all about 
us in the air we breathe. Escape from it we cannot. For 
a full hundred years the spirit of the Revolution has 
forced every one to take some position in reference to 
itself. One may be conservative, or progressive, or re- 
actionary; one may content himself with his newspaper, 


68 SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION 


or spend all his days in studying the thought of his time 
in its best expressions; one may think for himself, or be 
able to buy his whole system at a bookstore for a few 
dollars, and stow it away half read on a shelf, as is just 
now the custom of very many who revere the name of 
Herbert Spencer; one may publish continually all that 
passes through his brain, and more, too; or one may pre- 
serve that enviable love of silent contemplation which 1s 
no less creative than are the great life-giving forces of 
springtime, when the little blades of grass fill their 
places and do not advertise their beauty — yet, do 
what one will, one is a unit in the great process of tre- 
mendous change which has gone on, now swift and now 
seemingly regressive, now terrifying and now quiet, but 
always intensely active, from the dawn of the French 
Revolution itself. 

As a great man of the age of Revolution, and as a most 
characteristic man, one in whom the “passion for re- 
forming the world’’ went side by side with the most 
original perception of the forces that move the world, 
Shelley is a form of life that we dare not leave out of 
sight in any effort we may make to survey the most im- 
portant tendencies in modern thought and feeling. As 
undeveloped as he was many-sided and unfortunate, our 
poet is an image of the modern spirit itself — ardent, 
keen-sighted, aspiring, striving to be tolerant, yet often 
angry with misunderstanding; studious of the past, yet 
determined to create something new; anxious for practi- 
cal reforms, yet conscious how weary the work of reform 
must be; above all, uncertain of the end, often despond- 
ent, not knowing what the fates may have decreed as a 
reward for all this strife, and incomplete, raw, or ob- 
scure, even in its most cherished and loftiest ideas. Of 
such a nature, I say, is Shelley, like the spirit of the age 


SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION — 69 


itself — not now, to be sure, strictly as poet, but as man, 
as moral teacher, as thinker. As poet, in the stricter 
sense, Shelley represents not so much the age as himself. 
For it pleases the World-Spirit at times to think highly 
original and peculiar thoughts; and these, embodied in 
living men, may make them incomparable with their 
fellows in some one respect, models and not things 
modeled after others; and such a distinct and lonely em- 
bodiment of ideas was Shelley the poet, who, as poet, 
might have been dropped down into any other age as 
well as into ours. Only as intellectual and as moral be- 
ing may we claim him for our time, and find him one of 
the most striking representatives of the struggle with 
life problems which we ourselves carry on. 

In studying, then, the relation of Shelley to the Revo- 
lution, one studies our poet, not in his most peculiar and 
most individual aspect, but without doubt, as I hold, in 
that aspect of his nature which means the most for the 
world at large. We always admire, to be sure, wonderful 
individuals. The “‘deemoniac”’ power, whereby one soul 
conquers others with its fascination and leads them 
whithersoever it wills, is a power to which we delight 
to yield ourselves, with that love of the strongest which 
always guides us, even when we think ourselves most 
selfish. But the admiration for individuals is not the 
highest form of enthusiasm. The world is more than the 
men in it. The total of life is something more than the 
sum of the parts. The place of a man in the universe, in 
humanity, or in his age, is a more profitable subject for 
study than the remarkable skill, or beauty, or genius of 
this man himself. Shelley the moral man, the teacher, is 
higher in the scale of interest than Shelley the imagina- 
tive genius. And with Shelley the man we are now 
chiefly concerned. 


40 SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION 


When people speak of Shelley as preéminently a lyric 
poet, they commonly neglect to notice what profound 
consequences for his whole character, as a teacher of 
truth, are implied in this statement. Shelley is a lyric 
poet; but what is meant by the lyric power in poets? Is 
it not the power to view emotional experiences by them- 
selves, to separate each of them from all others, to regard 
every grand moment of life as standing alone, as out of 
the chain of causes and effects, as a glorious or terrible 
accident? If this is the fact, and we shall find it true in 
Shelley’s case, the peculiar fitness of our poet to embody 
and set forth the ideas of a period of revolution will at 
once be evident. When men break with past methods, 
the future seems to them a dark field full of strange ad- 
ventures. What may come they know not; they are 
sure only of this: that the unexpected will happen, and 
nothing but the unexpected. The poet, who shall ex- 
press their emotions, will then naturally be one to whom 
the world is less a finished system than a scene of grand 
actions, less a world of certainty than a world of magic. 
And such a poet will be lyric, rather than dramatic or 
epic. Let us trace some of the consequences of this gen- 
eral tendency in the case of our poet. 

Born in the year 1792, just at the beginning of the 
most terrible days of the French Revolution, Percy 
Bysshe Shelley grew up in an atmosphere of unrest. 
That he was sensitive and misunderstood, inquiring and 
dissatisfied, we know. Many other boys in quieter times 
have been like him in these things. But his sensibility 
was fed with stimulating ideas that not all men hear of 
very early in life. Of these ideas the most commonplace, 
perhaps, were the ones that had to do with superstition 
and mysticism. The Revolution at the end of the last 
century began, as everybody knows, with not purely 


SELB EU EY AND THE REVOLUTION, (71 


rationalistic tendencies. Rousseau was no rationalist, 
rather reactionary in these respects than otherwise. The 
whole revolutionary spirit rebelled not merely against 
the traditional social forms of Europe, not merely 
against the religious beliefs of ages, but also against the 
superficial philosophy of the eighteenth century itself. 
To explain the world by mere understanding was felt to 
be but a poor satisfaction for the many desires and hopes 
and fears and impulses that, in this time of restless ac- 
tivity, tinged men’s notions of things. So, often in the 
early revolutionary period you find a vein of mysticism 
running side by side with the most stoutly radical ten- 
dencies. The greatest writers of the time have a mysti- 
cal tinge in some part of their writings. Rousseau goes 
into raptures over the mysterious Being he feels every- 
where in nature. Goethe, in his childhood, sets up an 
altar to worship the Eternal after his own fashion, in his 
early youth studies alchemy and speculates on the Trin- 
ity, in his early manhood writes the first part of Faust, 
in his old age the mystical choruses of the Epilogue. 
Schiller, less given to free contemplation of the world, is, 
by so much the more, a prey to reflective speculation on 
the hidden soul of things, and the Ghostseer and the phil- 
osophic lyrics testify to a sense of the mysterious, and an 
insight into the problematic side of life, which rational- 
ism would wholly fail to comprehend. I need not speak 
at length of the German Romantic School proper, which 
sold its birthright to the succession of poetical empire 
for the poor boon of speculating on the realm beyond ex- 
perience. England did not escape the contagion. To be 
sure, much of the nonsensical in this mystical reaction 
against rationalism was imported from Germany. 
“Monk” Lewis and many translators familiarized the 
public with what were little more than vulgar ghost 


72)  SHELUEYWAND SEL DARE OLU LON 


stories, detestable even of their kind. But the genuine 
spirit, that was willing to see and express the mysterious 
in the strange destinies, emotions, and fears of a period 
of change, this natural and justifiable spirit of wonder, 
found in Coleridge’s early poems, in Scott’s healthy love 
of the marvelous, and, later on, in the early stages of the 
so-called Transcendental movement, a place on English, 
and, finally, on American ground. We must not despise 
even vagaries, in so far as they were honest vagaries, of 
this modern mysticism. Men felt, in the beginning of 
the Revolution, that the ground was insecure under 
their feet, that the future held great possibilities, that 
the world concealed the most weighty secrets. In all 
this, surely, they were right. To feel in view of the 
changes a superstitious terror, to picture in the realm of 
the possible all kinds of fantastic shapes, to interpret the 
world-secrets in terms of human emotions — all this 
was doubtless wrong; yet certainly it was natural. 
Shelley was early a mystic. While yet a boy he read 
tales of wonder, and wrote them; he dabbled in such 
occult sciences as common acids and primitive electrical 
apparatus make possible, and believed he was treading 
on the verge of nature’s deepest and most awful secrets; 
he conjured the devil with solemn earnestness, and 
hunted about in the dark for ghosts. Always a sceptic, 
he never ceased to be a mystic, and, if faith can be found 
among the followers of a revolution, Shelley held firmly 
to the end by this one faith, that, be this world what it 
may, it is at all events wonderful. 

More important than his love of the mysterious was 
his love of freedom. This emotion Shelley breathed in 
the air about him, and found it intensified by his own 
heart. Few men have had the love of freedom in a purer 
form than he. Most men would like to be free them- 


SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION 73 


selves, and are willing that others should be what for- 
tune makes them, so long as their lot be not all too hard. 
Shelley was absolutely universal, perfectly unselfish in 
his desire that men should be free. Freedom meant for 
him the same as the universal good of mankind. The 
slightest shadow of revenge he considered unworthy of 
the philanthropic soul; and so he would not deprive of 
liberty even the man who by wrong-doing had seem- 
ingly forteited the right to it. In this one idea of liberty 
he bound up all his beliefs as to the rules of practical life. 
To study Shelley’s theory of freedom is to study his 
poetry and prose, once for all, in its whole practical 
aspect. Most thoroughly an expression of the Revolu- 
tion was our poet in this direction of his thought. 
But yet another set of ideas went to the making of 
Shelley’s world. Early he developed and enduringly he 
held by a sense of the worth of emotional experiences. 
In this sense of the significance of feeling Shelley is at 
one with the best spirits of the early revolutionary age. 
The rationalism of the first half of the eighteenth cen- 
tury had reduced everything to a mere affair of the 
understanding. The outburst of poetry which is con- 
temporary with the outbreak of the political revolution 
is based on the recognition of the importance of feeling. 
Such a recognition the Storm and Stress poets forced on 
the German mind, and afterward the Lake school upon 
the English public, and again, years later, the French 
Romanticists on the thought of their own country. And 
one of the most dramatic histories that could be related 
of this century would be the history of the war of the 
intenser human feelings to gain and hold a place in es- 
teem and influence beside the higher forms of human 
intellect. Our modern life is full of this conflict. Litera- 
ture and daily experience furnish us numberless cases of 


74) SHELLEY VAN De THB REY OUU EON 


the struggle, fought out on the grandest and on the 
humblest fields. An age full of change and of great 
thoughts is naturally an age of such tragedies. 

Shelley never came to possess the sense of the worth 
of emotion; he always possessed it. In a sense in which 
few men have been uniformly and marvelously impress- 
ible, he was so. The power of vision never forsook him. 
We find him, to be sure, lamenting over his own weak- 
ness and poverty of experience: 


O world! O life! O time! 

On whose last steps I climb, 
Trembling at that where I had stood before, 
When will return the glory of your prime ? 

No more — oh, never more! 


Out of the day and night 
A joy has taken flight; 
Fresh Spring, and Summer, and Winter hoar, 
Move my faint heart with grief — but with delight 
No more, oh, never more! 


But we know that all this divine sadness belongs to a 
world into whose lowest sphere we ascend but once in a 
long time. We know that the high visions the poet 
mourns are such as our eyes see not at all, while his 
monotony would be to us the most stirring emotional 
life. The poet moves us to sorrow; we lament with him, 
but these tears, this cry of anguish, these sobbing meas- 
ures, we understand their true cause as little as if we 
were present at the funeral of a god, whom the other 
gods of high heaven were loudly mourning. What know 
we of climbing the last steps of life and time, or of the 
poet’s joys that thus took wing? I speak of us as we are 
in general, single glimpses aside. 

Thus far, then, we have noted certain tendencies in 
Shelley that seem directly expressive of the revolution- 


SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION = 75 


ary spirit. Like all the general statements about poets, 
ours must have been found tedious and vague enough. 
We shall, in the sequel, do what we can to correct our 
fault by more special references to the poet’s works 
themselves. Yet, before we go farther in this direction, 
a great question meets us face to face and demands 
answer, a question very general indeed, but very im- 
portant. We have been speaking of the age and spirit of 
the Revolution. What do we mean by the revolutionary 
spirit? What by the Revolution itself? What is the 
true significance for human progress of the great move- 
ment in which Shelley is but a unit, in which, as we saw 
in the beginning, we ourselves must play our part, 
whether we will or not? I conceive it to be a necessary 
portion of the work planned at the outset that we should 
give some space to a brief summary of one view at least 
concerning this great problem. 

To state, then, once more, our query: What is the 
revolutionary spirit? What is in general a revolution of 
human affairs and of human life? To answer the ques- 
tion neither too vaguely nor too hastily requires that we 
should revert for a little to first principles. 

Our ideas of the world, of the society about us, of life, 
of ourselves, exhibit, when we look at them somewhat 
closely, this wonderful characteristic: namely, that we 
are ever forming them afresh, ever reconstructing them 
out of their elements, ever creating, as it were, the very 
products we are supposed most permanently to possess. 
When we speak the word Humanity, or the word Uni- 
verse, or Life, or Time, or Being, we can do no real 
thinking with these words, unless, be it never so quickly 
and vaguely, we build up, put together, make syntheses 
of simpler ideas into the form of the great and complex 
idea suggested by the word used. Thoughts are not dead 


“6 SHELLEY AND THE: REVOLUTION 


and finished mind-products that you can lay away ona 
shelf, so as to take them down entire, dry, and sound, 
when you want to use them. Thoughts are living, and 
each thought lives, in the most literal sense, but a mo- 
ment. You must create your thought afresh whenever 
you want it. You create it, it flashes into active life for 
a moment, and then it is forever past. That thought 
cannot be recalled. You may make another like unto it. 
You may build ever afresh airy castles, and let time tear 
them down as soon as they are made. But retain the 
same thought mofe than an instant you cannot. What- 
ever treasures your mind possesses belong to it only in 
so far as you recreate them, reconquer them again and 
again, your whole life long. Activity, and ceaseless ac- 
tivity, is the price of the possession of even the hum- 
blest kind of knowledge. Give up acting, and all your 
past labors go for nothing. Even the most plodding soul. 
is thus in so far original in its thoughts as that these re- 
sult always from its own efforts exerted anew on every 
impulse. If one ceases entirely to be original, he ceases to 
think altogether. The essence of thinking is originality. 

Our thoughts are thus always the products of momen- 
tary, immediately exerted activity. And so, of course, 
is our practical behavior in so far as it runs parallel to 
our ideas. We do this or that because Society approves 
of it, or because Law sanctions it, or because Humanity 
is benefited by it, or because the world appears to us 
such and such in nature and ordering, so that in it just 
this course of action is good. So, at least, we commonly 
account for our deliberate and most worthy acts. But 
to behave in this wise presupposes ideas of the world, of 
humanity, of law, of society — ideas complex and far- 
reaching, which must, as shown, be formed anew when- 
ever we have reason to form them. 


SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION 77 


So, then, in order to act at all well and deliberately in 
the greater affairs of life, men must be able easily and 
accurately to build up for themselves, just when they 
want them, clear notions of the great powers and facts 
that are concerned in human life. They must and do 
have well formed, if not quite finished, if often quite 
erroneous, ideas about the universe and about destiny 
in order to live well the humblest lives. 

I lay stress on this great fact, because to understand 
it is necessary if you want to understand what is revo- 
lution. Men’s ideas and practices are in so far changing 
and changing ever,as menactive and men thoughtful are 
alike ever building up anew for themselves their world 
of ideas, of traditions, and of aims. The whole thought- 
fabric of human life is there, because human beings will 
at each and every moment that it should be there. The 
most cruel wrong, the most painful superstition, the 
most worthless prejudice, is what it is, because mankind 
please at this instant to suffer it or to conform toit. The 
highest aims, the most enduring truths, the most com- 
fortable persuasions, are what they are, because at each 
and every moment human consciousness creates them 
again out of chaos. The same mind-power that origi- 
nated still sustains all that is great or contemptible, 
morally good or morally evil, in human life. Men’s 
affairs, in so far as they are matters of thought at all, 
are solely what men make them. Only our sensations 
escape our control. Our thoughts are our own. 

But there is another and a very different aspect to 
this same truth. Changing, renewing themselves, are all 
our thoughts and principles ever, but the new thoughts 
are commonly like the old thoughts, the new acts follow 
the track of their predecessors. If it is true that our 
lives at any moment are the products of that moment, 


78 SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION 


it is none the less true that the product is formed with 
the least possible effort, and that the least possible effort 
means conformity to previous acts. Hence, along with 
the fact of ceaseless activity in human thought and life 
goes the no less far-reaching fact of ceaseless economy 
of energy, of perennial laziness, in human thought and 
life. The world of thought for men is at each moment 
what men choose to find it; but let men alone, and they 
will choose to find or construct it at each moment just 
like the world of the previous moment. Without stimu- 
lus, without definite ends in view, men will indeed go on 
rebuilding their ideas every instant, but the rebuilding 
will not be a reformation, in the ordinary sense, but a 
building after the old models. This is what we mean by 
conservatism. The conservative spirit creates, indeed; 
it must do so. Butit creates after the plan of its former 
creations. It originates, but by copying. All of us, how- 
ever, left to ourselves, are conservatives. We need stim- 
ulus to make us otherwise. Wants that the old fashions 
by constructing our ideas will not satisfy, experiences 
that demand new forms of effort to bring them into har- 
mony with older experiences, forces in the world beyond 
that call forth new answering strivings in our own hearts 
— these are the motives that lead us to be aggressive 
and revolutionary, to build our ideas after new fashions, 
to originate in a double sense, to will and purpose new 
things, to dwell as it were in a new world. Eating and 
drinking and sleeping are strictly conservative activities; 
they have to be performed ever afresh, but each new 
effort is like the former ones. Let us alone, entirely 
without disturbance, and conforming our lives to the 
rule of least waste of effort, we should inevitably do 
nothing but eat and drink and sleep. Disturbances 
arouse us, our fellowmen interfere with us, the struggle 


SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION = 79 


for life claims us, experience urges us with its scourge of 
many knotted problems, we cease to be purely conserva- 
tive for a time, and rush on to some new stage of equi- 
librium. Our methods once formed and conformed to 
our circumstances, we act again in peace and with regu- 
larity, build our ideas according to our methods, and 
remain conservative till new impulses forbid us to con- 
tinue longer in the same system and away we fly again 
in new revolution. Whence it follows that every revo- 
lutionary soul is seeking for nothing so much as anoppor- 
tunity to become once more conservative, while every 
conservative differs not at all in his final aim from the 
upholder of revolution; for both desire to do with the 
least waste of effort what they must do as long as they 
live. Each seeks the easiest methods of forming his 
ideas and ordering his action. Only the thoughts of the 
revolutionary soul are more confused, and so harder to 
bring into clearness, than are those of the conservative; 
while the ideas of the conservative are less complex, less 
evolved, and so less lively and rebellious, than those of 
his brother. The innovator is higher in the scale of be- 
ing, but he is imperfectly developed on his plane. The 
supporter of the old is a completer creature on the earth, 
but he is farther from Heaven. The restlessness of the 
revolutionary spirit is contagious, and reminds the con- 
servative what he ought to be seeking — namely, some- 
thing higher. The regularity of conservative methods 
that have grown to be a second nature is instructive, and 
admonishes the rebellious preacher of progress as to 
what he is seeking through all changes — namely, rest 
and stability. 

A revolution, then, in life or in society, is, on its in- 
tellectual side, a great change in the methods whereby 
men form their notions of the things of life and the 


80 SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION 


world — a change arising from this, that new material 
in experience or emotion refuses to be conquered by the 
old methods, or to conform itself to ideas of the old 
pattern. But as men are accustomed to conceive of new 
things after old fashions so long as it 1s possible to do so, 
the old fashions of forming ideas will remain unchanged 
so long as there are not formed great masses of experi- 
ence that rebel against the old methods. Then, at 
length, when the impossibility appears of thinking of 
the world and of life, of the government or of custom, of 
one’s fellows or of nature, in the old way, then suddenly, 
with anguish and strife, the old methods are abandoned, 
the entire mode of forming ideas is changed, the foun- 
tains of the great deep are broken up, chaos seems 1m- 
minent, and the struggle for new modes of living and 
thinking begins. 

Of the great practical changes that go side by side 
with these theoretical changes, we need not speak at 
length. The alteration in ideas concerns us the more. 
And one or two especially noticeable things come just 
here in our way. The ideas, namely, and the ways of 
forming ideas, that were accounted useful and perma- 
nent before the revolution, become upon the approach 
of the revolution itself objects of unbounded contempt. 
A holy zeal to destroy takes possession of men. In the 
service of the Highest, they think, must they tear down 
and root out. Forgetting that the old methods were ade- 
quate for the old problems, that the old way of building 
ideas mastered the old material, and was in so far forth 
a true way, leading to relatively true ideas, men de- 
nounce the old age as an age of shams and errors, and 
speak of their present work as a work of regenerating or 
of creating the truth. Men do not bethink them that 
the old age, too, was creative, only in a conservative 


SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION = 81 


sense. The old ideas they call lies. For “lie” is a name 
quite often applied to an unserviceable truth, whether 
its uselessness arises from old age or from extreme nov- 
elty. Nor does the imperfection stop here. The revo- 
lution, like everything else in life, must have its own 
ways of forming ideas. Even provisionally, in all the 
confusion, notions about the world and about destiny 
must ever anew be created. The revolution throws away 
the old methods. Its system is not yet completed. It 
must furnish off-hand new methods. It resorts to high- 
sounding commonplaces, and wearies us with shallow 
truisms. The innovator talks of Liberty, of Nature, of 
Equality, as if with these barren ideas the whole com- 
plexity of life could be measured. Forgetting the nega- 
tive character of the notions he recommends, forgetting 
that Nature means only the absence of voluntary inter- 
ference, Liberty the absence of restraint, Equality the 
absence of definite moral relations, he calls upon all to 
solve the world-problem with him by repeating these 
abstractions, and he leaves us as unsatisfied and restless 
with it all as even his most unbounded revolutionary 
zeal could have desired to see us. 

Such then is revolution, a conflict undertaken in the 
service of peace, a vast toil accepted in the interest of 
indolence; or, again, a destruction of numberless ideas 
and faiths, with the purpose of building up both knowl- 
edge and persuasion. No one understands the revolu- 
tionary spirit, I think, who does not see the deep-lying 
identity with it of the conservative spirit. As human 
nature is eternally active, the innovator is but the con- 
servative with more perplexing facts before him, and 
the conservative only the upholder of revolution who 
has now, at length, no more worlds to conquer. 

Thus, then, we have sought to give a clear, if very in- 


82 SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION 


adequate, idea of what revolution is. And, returning 
once more to our poet, we shall now understand better 
the meaning of the facts stated about him, and how he 
reflects in his own nature the spirit of a revolutionary 
time. We see how the unrest of the age finds expression 
in his mingling of the sceptical and mystical in his 
thought, how the gospel of the Revolution itself is em- 
bodied in his practical creed, and how the emotional 
strivings of the age receive in him a most wonderful 
representative. It remains for us to examine how these 
results of the Revolution, as embodied in the poet Shel- 
ley, are found to bear fruit in his works, and what lesson 
is thence to be drawn concerning the value of the ten- 
dencies of our time. 

Shelley, the practical reformer, is the inspirer of such 
conceptions as the Prometheus, or as the Revolt of Islam. 
Shelley, the poet of great experiences, sparkles in a mul- 
titude of rare gems of lyric poetry. Shelley, not only as 
lyric poet, but as seer and mystic, produces such mar- 
vels as the Triumph of Life, the Epipsychidion, or the 
Adonais, and adorns the Prometheus itself. In all these 
three directions of activity Shelley is the child of the 
Revolution in so far forth as his aims, his problems, and 
his beliefs are framed by the revolutionary spirit. 

Let us consider briefly the ‘‘ Prometheus Unbound.” 
A poem in the form of a drama, all of whose characters 
are supernatural beings, and withal abstractions, might 
be supposed lacking in human interest. It is not so, 
however. The keenest sense of the real problems of life 
pervades every line. The imagery is sometimes colossal, 
and sometimes subtle and delicate in the extreme, but 
never cold. A certain tendency to declamation one feels 
now and then in the first act; but, on the whole, a 
greater triumph over stubborn material cannot easily 


SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION _ 83 


be found. The intensest sympathy with human suffer- 
ings and hopes could alone have made such triumph 
possible. 

Prometheus is the representative of the soul of man. 
Personified as he is and given a real body and a real love, 
he loses something of his perfect character as representa- 
tive, but gains in human interest. As we know him in 
Shelley he is a kind of divine man, strong, wise, good, 
deathless, sleepless. His fortitude in suffering claims our 
worship at first, his joy and dignity our sympathy at the 
end. 

Forget for a moment, however, the personification. 
We are not enjoying the poem now, but thinking of its 
meaning. Let us see through the allegory to the truth 
beneath. The soul of man then, the human conscious- 
ness viewed in its highest manifestations, is condemned 
by cruel wrong to suffer under oppressors. Who are 
these oppressors? Shelley evidently means this, that the 
wise and good and lofty in human nature is perpetually 
in chains because tradition and custom and government, 
the instruments of those who are malicious because ig- 
norant and powerful, are ever striving to repress higher 
development and destroy higher wisdom. This is for the 
present the law, as it has been the law in the past, that 
the evil hates the good and is physically the stronger. 
Here, then, we have the first half of the revolutionary 
doctrine. The world, as it is, is bad, and must be 
changed. 

The higher consciousness of man is content to endure 
this wrong, because it knows the end must come. In 
the fierce anguish of new or cruel oppression, it may, in- 
deed, vent itself in cursing, not wishing other evil to 
happen to those who are evil than the fact of their base- 
ness, but condemning them in its wrath to that, and 


$4,’ SHELLEY, ANDSTHETREY OLW ION 


leaving off all effort to save them. In calmer moments, 
however, it sees how much to be pitied are those who are 
evil. It withdraws its curses; but it has no thought of 
yielding. One great comfort it finds continually in the 
companionship of nature. All things mourn the oppres- 
sion of man, as they will join in his rejoicings when he 1s 
free. To the higher consciousness all nature has a voice, 
is in league with the loftiest aims. But the soul of man 
has yet other comforts. The strivings of great thinkers 
to pierce the mystery of things, the outpourings of gen- 
erosity and love, of poetic fervor and devotion to liberty 
— all these things are continual prophecies of the com- 
ing emancipation. Thus, in courage, and hope, and de- 
fiance, the unconquerable spirit lives on, and awaits the 
day of freedom. 

But now, what and whence the deliverance? Can the 
apostle of the Revolution show us the means and the 
result of revolution? Evil has sprung up, and now rules 
the world. How is that evil to be destroyed? Is it not, 
as much as good, a necessary part of the universe, fixed 
beyond our power? If not, what are the laws whereby 
we can remove it? Prometheus can not destroy the evil 
himself; he is chained. He knows not how long the op- 
pressor’s rule will last; he knows only that it must some 
day end. I have heard of few stranger conceptions than 
this, emanating, as it does, from a reformer’s mind — 
than this, I say, of the chained Prometheus, the hope 
and embodiment of all that is good, the divine genius of 
reform, unable to see a moment in advance the coming 
of his deliverer, only assured that a deliverer must some 
day come, and meanwhile inactive, unable by any word 
or sign to hasten the accomplishment of the deliverance, 
a slave of fate, a child of accident. 


SHEE YG AND TARP REVOLUDION G7 63's 


And yet to me welcome is day and night; 

Whether one breaks the hoar-frost of the morn, 

Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs 

The leaden colored east; for then they lead 

The wingless, crawling Hours, one among whom — 
As some dark priest hales the reluctant victim — 
Shall drag thee, cruel king, to kiss the blood 

From these pale feet, which then might trample thee, 
If they disdained not such a prostrate slave. 

What means this self-contradiction of the revolu- 
tionary spirit? Why is Prometheus, the representative 
of progress, a prey to accident, helpless? Is this merely 
the result of the fable, or the expression of Shelley’s doc- 
trine of life? Partly, of course, both; but mainly the re- 
sult of the doctrine. Shelley need not have chosen 
Prometheus for his hero had he not wished it. He need 
not have bound himself with the chains of the old story 
had he not been willing. But, in fact, the world is to 
Shelley just this: a theatre of the sublimest accidents; 
a grand conflict of contrasts; a place where the triumph 
of good or of evil is a matter for joy or for lamentation, 
for enthusiasm or for horror, but never a definite end, to 
be reached or avoided by definite means. Shelley, the 
lyric poet, here appears in the strongest light. With the 
events and the experiences in the Prometheus we are 
held spellbound. Even their sequence, also, is sublime. 
But this sequence 1s as irrational, or super-rational, as it 
is sublime. Whether we hear about the dim and obscure 
Necessity, that some day the liberating hour should 
come, and the tyrant should fall, or whether we look 
merely at the grandeur of the event itself, the sudden 
outburst of the universe into a peean of harmony and an 
ecstasy of sacred love — whatever we may do, we can 
but call the entire occurrence a mere happening, a wild 
chance. We rejoice that the chance has found such a 


86. SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION 


poet to sing it. But we doubt whether this means any- 
thing at all for our poor, real world of practical life. Do 
reforms really come in this way? we say. 

Angry we are at our own question immediately. Of 
course, this is an ideal picture of things. Of course, the 
poet leaves out of account the forces of reform, and 
sings the glorious fact of reform itself. His picture is 
true, as far as it goes. It pretends not to discourse of 
causes and effects. And yet we must feel that this is not 
enough to have said. There is a defect, not an artistic, 
but an ethical one, in this poem. The doctrine 1s, de- 
spite all, only the orthodox revolutionary doctrine again, 
the teaching that you need but strike off the chains and 
the reform is accomplished; that you need but love fer- 
vently enough, and hate is quelled; that, in a word, the 
world is a game-table, whereon a good throw of the dice 
must now forthwith be expected, because we have so 
long made bad throws. 

That this was Shelley’s doctrine appears, I think, from 
all his poetry, and from what we know of his life. His 
faith in the good, and in the triumph of the good, was 
sublime in its earnestness; but in its foundation it is 
much the same as the gambler’s faith in luck, or as the 
ordinary stock optimism in which people always indulge 
when they wish to be considered especially clear-sighted. 
To say that in all things evil there is a soul of good; that 
the purpose of evil is simply to adorn and embellish good 
by contrast; that the deep desires of the human heart 
are certain to be realized — all this is supposed to be a 
sign of special profundity. Deeper, I think, would be 
the insight that were willing to recognize the problems 
of destiny as real, permanently real, and so forever in- 
soluble problems; while itself only showed us what, in 
this checkered life, the truly and eternally good is, and 


SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION — 87 


bade us seek and increase that good as we are able. But 
all this shall be but an objection to Shelley’s age, not to 
himself as the embodiment of it. To say that his opti- 
mism would have been shallow had it not been so deeply 
earnest, is to recognize the great truth about him, that 
he was undeveloped in his thought, but enviable in his 
ideas. 

The revolutionary spirit as the gospel of the acciden- 
tal was, I have said, especially fitted for Shelley’s na- 
ture as a lyric poet. The effort he makes in Laon and 
Cythna (The Revolt of Islam) to set forth the doctrine of 
revolution at length and in order shows, I think, more 
than ever the truth of this observation. What a mon- 
strous world of loveliness and horror, of glory and 
shame, is this into which the poet here introduces us. 
Yet just this is the conception of the world which he 
learned from his time, adding only the touch of his own 
genius. One sees in this poem especially one great de- 
fect of the doctrine in question. If the belief in sublime 
accidents leads us to hope that men will suddenly be 
reformed, and the world suddenly turned from darkness 
to light, the same belief, making certain as it does the 
possibility of terrible accidents, leaves only too much 
room to dread that the good will give place to evil, the 
world return to its former errors, and life once more be 
shadowed. If progress be mainly negative and cata- 
clysmic, what horrible reverses will not humanity have 
to endure throughout all time; the higher the develop- 
ment, the more terrible the disaster. 

It is strange to see how this doctrine, which one might 
suppose, after all, to be in Shelley the result of imma- 
turity and of over-haste to teach his fellowmen, is in 
fact derived from his father after the spirit, in process of 
time his actual father-in-law, William Godwin, who had 


88 SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION 


interpreted the doctrines of the Revolution to the young 
men of Britain in a book published first in 1793, and 
known as Political Fustice. Godwin’s first period of 
literary activity, the one from which of course Shelley 
learned most, is distinguished by a vast confidence in 
the power of liberty to cure all ills. Shelley drank in 
eagerly the spirit of the doctrines long after the author 
had come to see reason to modify the latter, and he was 
certainly not wanting in effort to put ideas into practice. 
His expedition to Ireland for the sake of aiding Catholic 
emancipation and-arousing the people is well known, and 
has, within a few years past, been investigated at length 
by Rossetti and McCarthy. Very fascinating is the pre- 
served correspondence with Godwin at this time. God- 
win had never met Shelley, knew him only by letter, but 
was not a little disturbed at witnessing the zeal of his 
young follower. He feared all manner of consequences, 
and used every effort to dissuade Shelley from continu- 
ing his work as an agitator. But Godwin’s efforts would 
have been to little purpose had not the poet come to feel 
that, after all, his vocation was not in Ireland. Yet only 
by degrees did Shelley abandon his projects of immediate 
social reform. Probably he never gave up the idea of 
being a great reformer some day; and if he had lived, 
doubtless in the days that followed his name would 
have been heard in fields other than what are commonly 
known as poetical. A passage with which the young en- 
thusiast closes a certain Declaration of Rights, a brief 
printed broadside composed during his Irish expedition, 
will serve to show us how his doctrines sounded when 
they are expressed, not in poetry, but in prose: 
Man! thou whose rights are here declared, be no longer for- 


getful of the loftiness of thy destination. Think of thy rights, 
of those possessions which will give thee virtue and wisdom, by 


SHEE EY“AND THEY REVOLUTION: )*89 


which thou mayest arrive at happiness and freedom. They are 
declared to thee by one who knows thy dignity, for every hour 
does his heart swell with honorable pride in the contemplation 
of what thou mayest attain — by one who is not forgetful of 
thy degeneracy, for every moment brings home to him the 
bitter conviction of what thou art. 


“ Awake! arise! or be forever fallen.” 


Evidently Shelley just here feels as much a hero as if 
he were Satan himself on the burning marl. He always 
had a proper and praiseworthy admiration for Satan. 

But enough of criticism of the revolutionary gospel 
as Shelley preached it. We see here the mistake into 
which our century has ever been apt to fall, a mistake 
which just now we seek to correct by studying natural 
science and history — those two great teachers of law 
and moderation and doubt. The mistake lies in recog- 
nizing from one side only that eternal activity which we 
noticed at the outset — the life-power whereby men 
make anew at each instant their works of good and evil; 
in recognizing, I say, this one side of the truth, while 
forgetting the other side, to wit: the fact of what I have 
named the perennial laziness of human nature, which 
prevents men from forming their ideas at any moment 
differently from the way in which they formed them the 
moment before, unless both new method and new im- 
pulses are present to their consciousness. The Revolu- 
tion said: Men make their lives such as they are; 
therefore, if men but willed it, the world would be happy; 
therefore, grant freedom of action, and nature will do 
the rest. But the truth is that men do will and must will 
to be as wretched as they are unless both knowledge and 
stimulus unite to bring them to a better mind; and even 
then the change will be slow, weary, full of anguish. We 
can never be sure that the life of benevolence and of 


go SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION 


nobility in aim is possible for the mass of the race until 
we see the result accomplished; and even in that case we 
have no reason to suppose that evil would be forever 
prevented, or the goal of progress attained. 

The Revolution was at first optimistic. Shelley, as 
representing it, is in purpose at least an optimist. But 
the fault of optimism is its blindness, and its naive trust 
in the power of good intentions. In our time our duty 1s 
to correct this optimism by recognizing the ever-present 
fact of evilin the world. Not for a moment excusing evil 
nor yet daring to forget or overlook it, we must make up 
our minds to endless conflict while life lasts. We look 
forward to no haven of peace so long as we deal with life 
in its practical aspect. In contemplation, in knowledge, 
in worship, there is indeed peace; but these things be- 
long not to active life, and to give ourselves up entirely 
to them is to be false to our duty to mankind. As men 
we must be in continual war. And even final victory for 
the right is never certain. 

But if the Revolution was imperfect, its spirit was 
noble; and we who inherit its problems dare not neglect 
to reverence its ambitions, its faith, and its pure inten- 
tions. 

I turn to those other forms of Shelley’s poetry wherein 
we may see embodied the intellectual and emotional ten- 
dencies of the Revolution. We have been looking at 
imperfections, not because we desired to pick flaws in 
Shelley, but because to note these things is profitable. 
Whatever belongs to our poet’s genius we find above 
criticism. Only as the embodiment of the ideas of his 
time, or as immature and not wholly master of his ma- 
terial, does he seem to us now and then imperfect. But 
when we come to consider him as the poetic voice of the 
emotions of the century, or as seer to whom higher truth 


SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION _— gi 


is often manifest, here we find him not learning from the 
age. His genius has full play. The time impedes him 
less and less. 

To catch a fleeting experience in its marvelous per- 
fection of emotional coloring, to crystalize it and make 
it eternal, to leave it a jewel in the world’s treasure 
house for all time, that it may flash back in multitudi- 
nous rays (how well worn the poor figure is!) the light of 
all future life that falls upon it — this is the great work 
of the lyric poet. This Shelley has done, living as he did 
in the midst of a time of revived emotional life, and has 
done with a magic power at which we can only mutely 
marvel. Think of the “Indian Serenade,” or of the 
“Lament,” which has been already cited, or of the songs 
in the Prometheus, or of Beatrice’s song in the last act of 
the Cenc: 


False friend, wilt thou smile or weep 
When my life is laid asleep? 
Little cares for a smile or a tear 
The clay-cold corpse upon the bier. 

Farewell! Heigh-ho! 

What is this whispers low? 
There is a snake in thy smile, my dear, 
And bitter poison within thy tear. 


Sweet sleep! were death like to thee, 
Or if thou couldst mortal be, 
I would close these eyes of pain — 
When to wake? Never again. 
O, world! farewell! 
Listen to the passing bell! 
It says thou and I must part, 
With a light and a heavy heart. 


Even the bitter and uncertain conflict to which the 
Revolution introduces us seems not too hard, if in its 
pauses we can hear at moments such strains of music as 


92)  SHELEBY AND STREVREVOLUTION 


this, breathing as they do from and for hearts that, 
without all the bitter conflict, might be dead and joined 
to the things of earth alone. 

But if already, as one who notes down experiences, 
Shelley is a marvel and a benefactor, as a seer of truth 
he has claims upon our regard even greater. The Revo- 
lution has meant for so many souls doubt, distress, hesi- 
tation in the choice of ideals, or even blank materialism 
of moral aims, that it is at once strange and refreshing 
to deal with a soul whose consciousness of the worth of 
ideal truth never falters, and that is withal so familiar a 
guest in the world of the ideals as to be quite uncon- 
scious that what itself tells us is at all extraordinary. 
Most mystics and idealists of any sort are a little proud 
of the fact, and like to recount to us with childish sim- 
plicity how they know secrets that they in no wise in- 
tend to reveal, how they deal with matters quite out of 
the common reach. Shelley has this in common with 
Swedenborg, that he is a very unmystical kind of mystic, 
and pretends to know a world of fact by no means so 
foreign in import to our own world. Shelley’s mysticism 
is, however, unlike Swedenborg’s, purely poetical, and 
hence perfectly safe, being judged altogether by the 
standards of emotional truth. He introduces us into 
the region of high contemplation, the region of all most 
secure from the disturbances of the world of practical 
life; and in this calm abode he entertains us with thought 
never dogmatic, infinitely plastic, and colored with all 
the many hues of his light-giving spirit. Here it is that 
Shelley appears at times as the man of a fervor rightly 
to be named religious. There is the same contempt of 
the finite, the same elevation above the world of sense, 
the same beatific vision, that marks the best moments 
of the saints of all ages. Adonais is the record of such 


SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION ~—§ 93 


experiences. The picture of that higher life which he for 
a moment attributes to the dead is not easily surpass- 


able: 


Peace! peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep — 
He hath awakened from the dream of life — 

"Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep 

With phantoms an unprofitable strife. 


But as a seer, Shelley above all distinguishes himself 
in the character of a philosopher of love. In this realm 
so remote, and to most poets so inaccessible, of genuine 
unsentimental comprehension of the great passion, 
Shelley has obtained for himself the highest rank. And 
this is a subject of some importance for our present busi- 
ness, because the poets of the Revolution period have all 
been very wayward in their treatment of the higher af- 
fections; and,in the doubt and obscurity of mind attend- 
ant upon the revolutionary spirit, have run from the 
extreme of sentimental ecstasy to the extreme of scepti- 
cism in regard to the worth, the truth, and the enduring 
character of love. Shelley, in the Epipsychidion, and in 
many single passages, has dealt with the subject in a 
spirit of the happiest faith. Love is with him real, and 
of profound importance; but half the ordinary senti- 
ment about it means nothing to him at all. Hardly a 
more profitable study in higher criticism could be men- 
tioned than one that compared in detail, as Shelley him- 
self has compared in general, Dante’s Vita Nuova with 
the Epipsychidion; the philosophic love of the age of 
romance, given up as it 1s to deep self-questionings, with 
the free, overflowing passion of this favored child of 
the age of Revolution, who had loved, as he said, an 
Antigone in some previous state of existence, and now 
could never rest in the precious toil of pursuing her 
shadow through all the world. 


94 SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION 


But, to sum up we find in revolution the effort to ac- 
commodate the activity of thought and practical life to 
the ever new demands of emotion and experience. The 
Revolution of the past hundred years has expressed es- 
pecially the need of the individual for fuller life, and for 
a better knowledge of his place in the universe. To use 
an expression from Novalis, many ways have the men of 
our day traveled; their end has been the same. To con- 
quer the doubt of the time, and find themselves homes 
in the strange chaos of ideas with which the modern 
world seems filled, has been their common effort. Shel- 
ley, as a representative of the revolutionary spirit, has 
two chief things to teach us: that in the world of ac- 
tive life we are in no wise near to a solution of our 
problems. In the enthusiasm of the poet, which vented 
itself in dreams of an ideal society, dreams unlike the 
reality, and useless if they had been the reality, we see 
mirrored the incapacity of the modern spirit to lay the 
ghosts it has called up. Optimism is a resort as useless 
as it is unfounded. We are in the struggle of the Revo- 
lution still. We know not how it is to end. It would be 
no struggle if we did know. We know not that good 
must and will triumph. If we did know, why lay our 
vain hands on the ark and meddle with a predetermined 
fate? But, as such bold efforts as Shelley’s teach us, we 
are unable to know. Progress is full of mishaps and acci- 
dents. Our duty 1s to watch and fight, ever on the look- 
out for foes, as a tiger in a jungle that the hunters are 
beating might wander, still brave and confident, but 
ever looking this way and that for the gleam of the 
bright spears. In active life the lesson Shelley teaches is, 
save for the example of his heroism, and devotion, and 
high purpose, mainly a negative one. 

But as a child of the Revolution, Shelley gives ex- 


SHELLEY AND THE REVOLUTION = 95 


ample, too, of the intellectual and poetical results of the 
age of unrest; and here he is our guide altogether. As 
contemplation is ever better than action, as thought is 
higher than things, as ideals put to shame the efforts 
made to realize them, so does Shelley, in the world of 
ideas, stand far above the unrest of the age, a grand 
model. Send us, too, O Life, such power to endure and 
tosee! Ifonly at rare moments we are favored as he per- 
petually was, those moments will outweigh all the years 
of conflict, and uncertainty, and pain, and disappoint- 
ment that lengthen out our lives, weary children as we 
are of an age filled with the woes of doubt and with toil 
in the dark. 


THE NATURE: OF VOLUN TARY 
PROGRESS 


[ 1880 | 


OR the somewhat ambiguous word progress mod- 

ern thought has tried to substitute the less inex- 

act term evolution. By progress in a series of 
events or of conditions is commonly meant a tendency 
in this series toward some final state that seems to a 
spectator better than any other member of the series. 
Progressis growth that receives the moral orzsthetic ap- 
proval of the observer in whose judgment it is progress. 
But by evolution is meant any growth according to law, 
whether pleasing to an observer or displeasing. Two 
persons who cannot agree as to whether in a given series 
of events there is progress, may be forced to agree as to 
whether in the same series there is or is not evolution. 
By optimist we mean very often one who believes that 
progress is universal and never ending. But a pessimist 
might believe in evolution. Just as elsewhere in science 
words implying a knowledge of objective sequences are 
substituted for words expressing subjective impressions 
produced by these sequences, so here in the science of 
society we find true advance made when the abstract 
term evolution is introduced. 

Nevertheless, in the following essay I shall find it con- 
venient to use the term progress rather than the term 
evolution. For changes in the condition of mankind may 
be regarded either as following fixed laws of sequence or 
as having some relation to the wishes of men themselves. 
Only when we regard these changes in the former way 
can we be said to study simply the laws of evolution. 
When we consider the same facts in the second way, 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS 97 


when, in other words, we ask what men’s own desires 
have been able to accomplish in the structure of society, 
then it seems best to say that we are studying the laws 
of progress. For changes that realize the purposes of the 
men concerned are called by themselves cases of prog- 
ress; and so viewing all these changes in their relations 
to these purposes we may apply to them all the general 
term voluntary progress. Whether or not we who ob- 
serve such changes approve of them, at all events the 
men who made them approve of them. Thus we are at 
once rising above our own subjective judgments, and 
yet not abstracting altogether from the subjective ele- 
ment in the structure and growth of society. By study- 
ing the nature of voluntary progress I mean, therefore, 
investigating the way in which human purposes and 
desires modify the institutions and growth of society, 
when they modify them at all. 

All cases of voluntary progress are also cases of evo- 
lution. But in studying the laws of voluntary progress 
we must not expect to find them the same as the laws of 
purely physical evolution. If we find them different, 
that does not indicate that the truth of the laws of physi- 
cal evolution, 7. ¢., of evolution unaffected by conscious 
human interference, is in any wise brought into question. 
Furthermore, in studying voluntary progress we need 
not consider even the degree of influence that men may 
possess to alter by conscious interference the phenomena 
of society; we need only investigate the quality of their 
influence,. the tendency of their interference when it 
succeeds at all. Finally, not every change in society that 
results directly or indirectly from conscious effort con- 
cerns us in the following; but only those results need be 
studied that are examples of the success of deliberate 
and persistent efforts. Hasty undertakings, unwisely 


98 THE NATURE OF 


conceived and soon followed by repentance, are not 
cases of voluntary progress. Even those who undertook, 
and whose efforts were effective, do not approve of the 
result. 

1. The Subjective Prerequisites of Voluntary Progress. 
— The study of the phenomena of voluntary progress 
may best be begun by considering what are the pre- 
requisites in the consciousness of mankind which make 
voluntary progress possible. Evidently men cannot con- 
sciously influence the growth of society until they them- 
selves have attained the power of criticizing present 
conditions, of reflecting on means of bringing about a 
change, and of understanding and conceiving in some 
general form their needs. Analysis of the present state, 
discovery of laws of change, the formation of ideals, 
these belong to all voluntary progress. Voluntary prog- 
ress is therefore especially characteristic of civilization 
and grows more distinct as civilization advances. That 
he is progressive at all, and more especially that his 
progress is largely modified by his volition, seems to dis- 
tinguish the civilized man more and more as he rises 
higher. 

2. Consciousness attendant upon Voluntary Progress. 
— With these prerequisites in mind we notice two prin- 
cipal tendencies that appear in all voluntary progress 
under normal conditions. These tendencies are insep- 
arable, though, as we shall see, where one of them is 
especially prominent the other is often kept in the back- 
ground of consciousness. 

The two tendencies referred to I shall call Conserva- 
tism and Optimism. The uncommon tendencies that 
under some circumstances directly oppose these are the 
Revolutionary Spirit and Pessimism. But, as will be 
shown, these tendencies have never long been without 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS 99 


mixture of the tendencies that they oppose, and may 
be regarded as but modifications of the normal tenden- 
cies. 

a. Conservatism.— By Conservatism I mean the tend- 
ency to change old conditions to meet new needs, in 
such a way as shall involve the least possible expendi- 
ture of energy. But this expression needs explanation. 
Conservatism is commonly supposed to be simply sub- 
mission to an existent order of things. Is this true? Let 
us in answer consider the conditions under which either 
conservatism or its opposite is possible. Evidently 
neither of them can be spoken of unless the society of 
which we speak is one whose members have some con- 
scious power to affect its constitution. There is neither 
conservatism nor liberalism in a flock of sheep. Old cus- 
toms are indeed followed by new generations of sheep, 
but without consciousness, without power to resist or 
approve. There can only be conservatism when men 
could change their social condition, and know that they 
could. When they have the power to change in some 
definite way their social order, and refuse to do so, then 
for the first time they show the conservative spirit. 

But this power to change an existing order of things, 
what does that imply? Evidently an understanding of 
the existing order of things, the power of thought al- 
ready well developed. An institution or a tradition is 
not an objective thing of sense. All kinds of symbols, or 
of effects, or of outward expressions of the institutions 
may be seen with the eyes, but the institution or tra- 
dition itself must be conceived. Now, however, when 
the social forms are comprehended in this manner, what 
will it be to cling to them, to wish to retain them un- 
changed? Plainly, such clinging to the old forms can 
only mean a tendency to arrange new experiences in the 


100 THE NATURE OF 


old way, and to do new things after the old plan. Hav- 
ing seen how given social phenomena are instances or 
results of certain forms, the conservative wishes to find 
that all new social phenomena are also instances or re- 
sults of the same social forms. His attitude then is one 
of desire to organize his new experiences without taking 
the mental trouble to construct or to accept new forms 
for the process of organizing. Conservatism is therefore 
an effort to save energy of thought. New conceptions, 
new plans of action, involve more effort than is involved 
in the subsumption of new facts under old conceptions, 
or in the undertaking of new work after old plans. Were 
it as easy to change the forms of our thought or the plans 
of our actions as it is to change the matter of our thought 
or the concrete things with which and for which we act, 
there would be no conservatism. The conservative, like 
every other human being, delights in variety of experi- 
ences, welcomes the new, and hopes for better things; it 
is only the forms of his thought and action which he 
does not desire to change. 

But if this be the explanation of conservatism, where 
is there room left for radicalism? If it be true that to 
change old forms is in general harder than to alter the 
material that comes under these forms, and if the desire 
to do all things with the least expenditure of effort be an 
universal human desire, where then is there room for a 
tendency whose nature it is to seek change of form, and 
whose delight it is to expend energy without stint? The 
probable answer seems to be that a steadfast and perma- 
nent tendency to destroy forms because they are estab- 
lished does not exist. There is, I take it, no absolute 
radicalism in voluntary progress. Men never desire, ex- 
cept in the heat of passing anger, merely to alter institu- 
tions or traditions. The Extreme Left in its wildest 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS IO] 


schemes wishes in fact to adapt present institutions to 
new experiences. It is true that change of social forms 
is a common object of revolutionary effort. But the 
change 1s sought only because in view of new experiences 
and of new needs it is believed that retaining the old 
form would imply a greater waste of energy than finding 
a new one, because the old form does not at all suit, 2. ¢., 
explain or generalize the new facts. For total contradic- 
tion between form and matter, between general plan 
and individual need, between conception and single ex- 
perience, would be the greatest expenditure of energy 
possible. A new form must be sought, and that in the 
very interest of conservatism. The very thing that the 
conservative desired, viz., to do new things with the 
least waste of effort, is now gained by modifying the old 
plan. “He is the best conservative who lops the mould- 
ering branch away.”’ This might be the expression of 
the most radical thought; yet it does not essentially dif- 
fer from the expression of the most conservative thought. 
The question between the conservative and the radical 
is always a question of fact, not one of fundamental 
principles. Both must admit, if they but fairly examine 
their consciousness, that they desire new things of ex- 
perience, that neither wishes mere monotony. Both 
must admit that they wish the new things to be dealt 
with after such a fashion as to economize effort in mas- 
tering and using them. Both must admit finally, if they 
reflect, that it is harder to find a new fashion of dealing 
with things, than to employ an old fashion for new pur- 
poses, always excepting the case wherein the old fashion 
is entirely inadequate for the new purpose. The differ- 
ence is then merely about the concrete instance. In 
this case, will labor be saved by this change of tradition 
or of institution? 


102 THE NATURE OF 


In brief, then, the radical is for the most part the con- 
servative whose experiences will not fit into the forms to 
which he has previously learned to refer all his experi- 
ences. He will cease to be a radical and become once 
more openly conservative, as soon as his experiences har- 
monize with his rules and traditions sufficiently to make 
the effort of carrying out fixed plans under varying cir- 
cumstances once more less than the effort of forming 
new plans. 

Experience verifies this construction very clearly. 
That conservatism applies only to permanence of form 
will appear, if we remember that what the people con- 
cerned regard as forms may appear to others, to our- 
selves for example, as mere accidental circumstances. 
Conservatism clings to what it regards as a form, and 
has of course no gift of infallibility. To what is regarded 
as purely material the conservative tendency does not 
extend itself. 

That, therefore, freedom of action within bounds is 
characteristic of all conservatism, whether extreme or 
otherwise, is plain enough on the slightest reflection. 
But that radicalism, unless we mean thereby the vio- 
lence of transient passion, and no more, is even in its 
extremest forms in spirit conservative, and desires 
change not from love of change, but by reason of the 
stress of new experiences and problems, is not of itself so 
evident. But already we can mention one or two facts 
that most clearly indicate this result. For example, ex- 
perience shows that very many revolutions claim to be 
returns to old and forgotten or neglected rules or tra- 
ditions. Religious reforms, for example, commonly 
represent themselves as awakenings to a new sense of 
the truth and importance of old teachings. Christianity 
was at first explained as an effort to fulfill in spirit the 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS 103 


law that had long been encumbered by a mass of later 
unauthoritative tradition. The Protestant reformers of 
modern times have generally undertaken to restore 
primitive Christianity. The Puritan revolution began 
with the program of rescuing the English Constitu- 
tion from the abuses brought into its operation by the 
Stuart kings and their advisers. Every now and then 
some modern thinker calls attention to his doctrines, 
and gains support or ridicule for them, by representing 
them as having the authority of some ancient system; 
and thus Democritus and Plato, or Lucretius, or per- 
haps Spinoza, in strangely modernized shapes, are 
brought into play as ghosts on the stage of contemporary 
controversy. Where a revolutionary movement cannot 
point to an historical tradition as its authority, it loves 
to invent a mythical tradition. The fiction of the Social 
Contract gave support to the doctrines of the French 
Revolution. The authority of a great religious reformer 
like Buddha, is heightened by a mythical tale of his life 
in many preceding states of existence, so that an ap- 
pearance of continuity may show the new religious revo- 
lution to be but a revival of old tendencies. 

In all these cases, no doubt, the revolution cannot 
fully justify itself by its appeal to tradition. If the tra- 
dition is mythical, all outside the circle of the new faith 
will remain unconvinced by it. If the tradition is his- 
torical, the old rules and traditions will seldom if ever 
suffice to justify the new ideas. The Puritans had at 
last to break with the English Constitution and de- 
throne the king. The apostle Paul soon proved to the 
early church that its theory about restoring the old law 
was inadequate to its needs. Protestant reformers, when 
they undertake to restore primitive Christianity, soon 
show by their results that their real object is something 


104 THE NATURE OF 


different. Yet this inability of the reformer to identify 
his reform with any tradition does not show that he 
makes an effort to break away from tradition altogether. 
His inability proves only that there are new social needs 
to be met. His effort proves that in trying to meet these 
new needs, he has sought to do so with the least possible 
change of existing traditions. And see how this effort 
gives rationality and organization to the spirit of the 
reformers. The old way known to the fathers, and since 
forgotten, the purity of the ancient faith, the authority 
of the ancients, how such ideals, appealed to by vigorous 
and revolutionary reformers help to give unity to this 
new movement, which would otherwise sink into a mass 
of vague tendencies, purely negative. It is the conserva- 
tive element in revolutions that saves them from utter 
confusion. And even if they found their conservatism 
on a myth, the myth gives them unity. Nothing can 
more plainly show the purely relative nature of radi- 
calism than these attempts, unsuccessful as they prove, 
to reduce the tendency towards change of forms as much 
as possible, by making it appear as much as possible 
like a mere effort to restore. But enough of these ex- 
amples. Our thesis is that conservatism and radicalism 
are examples of a single tendency of voluntary progress, 
the tendency, namely, to satisfy changing needs with 
the least possible change of plan, to gain as much new 
experience as possible with the least alteration of the 
ways of gaining it. Yet thus far we exemplify rather 
than prove the doctrine. 

b. Optimism.— The second tendency mentioned 
above as found everywhere in voluntary progress is the 
tendency that for want of a better name we may call 
optimism. Optimism I define as the belief that things 
are in some respect growing better, and that human 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS 105 


effort can make them grow better. Evidently the belief 
that a certain measure of success is to attend human 
efforts is a necessary part of all deliberate interference 
on the part of individuals with the social order. Inter- 
ference, selfish or otherwise, is prompted by the belief 
that it can accomplish some end. Nor can this belief 
ever be founded wholly upon experience. Be the changes 
attempted great or small, no one can ever tell whether 
or not coming events will prove the changes successful. 
Confidence in success is to a great extent a matter of 
temperament and earnestness. Wherever that tempera- 
ment and that earnestness is present which is adequate 
for the purposes of those who are to bring about social 
changes, we shall find that confidence in the triumph of 
the right which is here called optimism. 

No doubt the strict meaning of the word optimism 
would imply more than merely this. Optimism, as a 
theory of the universe, is the assertion that our world is 
throughout very good. This assertion has long been out 
of date. But there is the disposition to regard things 
as tending towards the good, which everywhere accom- 
panies vigorous civilization. Mr. James Sully has pro- 
posed for this tendency the name meliorism, but as yet 
the term shows no signs of becoming popular. As for its 
nature, this tendency is evidently either an aid to con- 
servatism or a compensation for the absence of conser- 
vatism. The civilized man, we have said, seeks to retain 
the forms of his activity unchanged, or to change with 
the least possible expenditure of energy when it be- 
comes absolutely necessary to alter the forms. But 
when the expenditure of energy required by the circum- 
stances is very great, then one must reconcile one’s self 
to the required rebellion against conservatism by a cor- 
responding increased confidence that one’s great efforts 


106 THE NATURE OF 


are to meet with becoming reward. And so the confi- 
dence must be greater in proportion as the change that 
has to be brought about is of wider scope and profounder 
influence. Optimism is especially characteristic of great 
reformers, of men engaged in conflicts, of new civiliza- 
tions. Every religious journal published by a small sect 
will furnish an example of the way in which a heresy is 
the more confident of success and of coming universal 
domination if its present members are very few. To be 
sure such optimism is not inconsistent with much that is 
called pessimism: Reformers spend much time in de- 
nouncing the world that they have come to save. Here- 
tics generally regard the rest of mankind as outcasts, 
and declare the existent state of things very bad. But 
such a belief does not constitute true pessimism. If 
evils are merely accidental, and if the reformer knows 
the way by which to remove them, then there may be 
much cause for grief, but none for despair. All up- 
holders of revolution are believers in the success of hu- 
man effort, are therefore optimists. The more ignorant 
and misguided the revolution, the more does its opti- 
mism appear in glaring colors. For in such a revolution, 
since wisdom fails, the faith of the reformer alone re- 
mains to distinguish it. No modern institution is more 
purely optimistic than the Sand Lot. 

Optimism, when not the expression of the undis- 
turbed and self-satisfied conservative spirit, is thus seen 
to be the effort on the part of conservatism to be recon- 
ciled to those sacrifices which the conservative spirit 
must permit. As conservatism was found to be universal 
but in a very relative sense, so we find optimism a uni- 
versal tendency of civilized men, only very much modi- 
fied by experience and reflection. There are, in fact, 
four stages of optimism, four forms in which it appears, 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS 107 


each one more modified than the previous, because more 
enlightened. The first stage is that of the purely indi- 
vidual childish optimism, which may be expressed in the 
formula: “I shall prosper.”’ Such optimism, if shared by 
all the individuals of a community, will express itself in 
an unbounded confidence in the future success of all 
that the community undertakes. But the feeling will 
be personal, not patriotic, not a willingness to sacrifice, 
but a belief of each one that he is destined to be happy. 
Such is the optimism of a mining camp. That the fact 
of misfortune modifies such optimism, and makes it, as 
in the case of the ancient Hebrews, a belief that only a 
good man is happy, and successful in his undertakings, 
this makes the optimism none the less purely selfish, and 
necessarily unable to stand in the face of the experiences 
of more complex civilization. Men soon learn that indi- 
viduals are not of necessity destined to be happy, and 
the feeling of higher civilization comes to be more and 
more what we may call patriotic optimism, a faith that 
individual efforts, if lost for the individual himself, are 
not lost for his community, that the combined effect of 
everybody’s efforts is progress and general good. This 
second stage of optimism is what characterizes com- 
munities, and nations, and sects, and great organized 
movements of thought, while they are yet growing and 
active. Beyond this stage the common civilized con- 
sciousness never rises. Yet those few who take interest 
in humanity as a whole and to whom the chief end is the 
good of mankind may be optimists in a higher but more 
modified sense. Such optimists see that communities 
and sects, nations and even races may fail utterly, but 
they believe that in the long run mankind as a whole 
improves, and that efforts in the service of humanity 
need never be wholly lost. Whatever the evils of life 


108 THE NATURE OF 


now, life they believe tends towards the good. In all 
their labors they are hopeful. On each one of these three 
stages it will be seen that something is regarded as bad 
in life though hope is still entertained that this evil may 
be removed. The sanguine individual sufters particular 
evils, but hopes tor good in the end. The sanguine pa- 
triot sees fortune desert him or his friends, but believes 
in the final triumph of the nation. The sanguine human- 
itarian trusts that somehow good will be the final goal of 
ill, yet has to admit that the ill is at present very great. 
A fourth stage is possible which is a more modified, I will 
not now saya higher, form of optimism. This fourth form 
of optimism sees so much evil in the world and so little 
chance of remedy in the regular course of things that we 
commonly call it pessimism. Yet this belief is not one of 
entire despair; there is still hope for human effort. Only 
the effort must evidently be of an entirely new and 
strange kind, the good attained one that ordinary men 
would call very scant reward. This form of modified op- 
timism declarescommon human life, with all itsordinary 
aspirations and ends a failure, and sees no reason to ex- 
pect that it will be better by and by. But from this 
point of view there is still a way of escape. A new life, 
one with altogether different aims is still possible, and in 
this ideal life there is good. Such is the doctrine of 
Buddha, of asceticism everywhere, of the author of the 
“Tmitation of Christ,” and in modern times of Schopen- 
hauer, and even of the newer schools of English poetry, 
whose doctrine, to be sure, is not an ascetic one. 

This last form of optimism has itself several varieties. 
It may amount to a belief that human life, though a 
failure in this world, will be a success in another. It may 
form for itself a picture of some entirely unique life on 
this earth, which would be perfectly good, though only 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS 109 


saints can live it. Or it may conceive of certain states of 
consciousness, which though they cannot fill the whole 
of life may from time to time come into life so as to 
make the rest of it endurable. Contemplation, or poetic 
enjoyment, or some other form of impersonal pleasure, 
may be chosen as the ideal. A world in which such 
things are attainable is not wholly bad, and since we 
may hopefully strive to attain them, we are still even 
on this stage after all the disillusioning process, not 
without the earnestness that in the first. place was the 
soul of optimism. Absolute pessimism does not appear 
to exist as a permanent state of consciousness in civilized 
men. For several poets and philosophers the claim has 
been made that they were absolute pessimists. Perhaps 
they may have been for a time, for the greater part of 
their lives even; but they were commonly hard workers 
and acute thinkers. Study and thought are activities 
requiring earnestness and enthusiasm, and therefore 
some form of hope. It seems best to say, then, that 
while the most skeptical form of optimism hopes for 
little of that which men commonly call good, it is not 
without belief that there is some good in life, though 
that good be very hard to attain. If selfish activities are 
given up as hopeless, then in labor for the good of others 
there is found a permanent and attainable end. Or if 
practical life is despaired of, refuge is taken in contem- 
plation. Or if thought is painful, art for art’s sake is 
the last resort of the cultivated mind. The active man 
is never entirely without hope. 

To sum up our results thus far. Conservatism and 
optimism attend voluntary progress everywhere. But 
in form they are modified as experience advances or as 
circumstances become more complex. Conservatism 
sometimes disguises itself as the wildest radicalism, and 


IIO THE NATURE OF 


optimism sometimes appears as the dreariest hatred of 
the world. But throughout the effort of human con- 
sciousness is to preserve intact, as far as possible, the 
unity and simplicity of the forms of its thought and 
action. When the form must be modified, let the modi- 
fication be the least possible. If the change must be 
great, let the confidence that the good will triumph be 
as strong as possible. But if experience be so complex as 
not to be reducible to known forms at all, if our ideas 
are so disturbed that skepticism results, if our needs are 
so complex that unity of plan is impossible, and if in the 
great changes that must be made we can have little hope 
of success, then at least when all else fails we seek the 
same that we at first sought, unity and simplicity of 
ideas and ideals, by breaking altogether with the tradi- 
tional vein of life and setting up for our goal something 
entirely beyond the range of ordinary human vision. In 
all these stages we have exemplified many forms of vol- 
untary progress, but always one and the same nature. 
3. The Law of Voluntary Progress.— lf the foregoing 
analysis is correct we have already discovered something 
of the nature of voluntary progress. We shall be led to 
believe that voluntary progress is characterized by a 
tendency to preserve social forms intact, and so to make 
them apply to new material. We shall consider again, 
if we agree to the foregoing, that voluntary progress 
takes the direction of change with the least possible 
expenditure of energy, when change of social forms is 
required. And yet further, asa corollary to these princi- 
ples we shall expect to find that the resultant of volun- 
tary progress is a simplification of the social structure, a 
change in the direction of homogeneity rather than in 
the direction of heterogeneity. When in any series of 
social changes we find growth towards the heterogene- 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS Ii 


ous and complicated, we shall be led to believe that 
deliberate volition is not responsible for the changes in 
so far forth as they were changes in the direction of in- 
creased complication. And thus the law of voluntary 
progress will appear as in one important respect directly 
opposed to the law of purely physical evolution, social or 
extra-social, as this law is usually formulated. 

4. The Types of Voluntary Progress. — Voluntary 
progress as the deliberate modification of the forms of 
human activity to suit changing needs, will have as 
many different types as there are types of human activ- 
ity. The voluntary activities in which men are con- 
cerned in society are the forms or types which specially 
interest us in this essay. We shall have to speak of in- 
dividual activities, but we shall do so only in so far as is 
necessary to throw light on social activities. In classify- 
ing the types of human action, we shall have for the first, 
to leave out of account such activities as are mainly de- 
termined in their nature and growth by external causes, 
although they may be in themselves voluntary activi- 
ties. If we turn to those types of human activity which 
are largely under men’s control, not only as regards 
single acts, but as regards the forms used, our attention 
is attracted by four distinct types of action manifest on 
the slightest consideration: (1) thought activities; (2) in- 
dustrial activities; (3) political activities; (4) and moral 
activities. In all of these’a concert of individual actions 
produces a resultant greater than the numerical sum of 
the individual contributions, or else different in kind 
from this sum. Thus by discussion and by the aid of 
tradition, the united effort of men produces thoughts 
which no individual thinking, however acute and con- 
tinued, could ever have evolved. The resultant of united 
political activity is again the state, an institution differ- 


112 THE NATURE OF 


ent in kind from the contributions brought by any one 
member of society, whose power is therefore not the 
mere arithmetical sum of the powers of its subjects, but 
an organic product of all of them. And so in the case of 
the other types of activity mentioned, which are none of 
them purely individual, and all of them voluntary, and 
all of them determined to a considerable extent in their 
forms by the will of those who engage in them. In the 
growth of these activities we shall expect to find volun- 
tary progress. 

5. Voluntary Progress in Thought. — For this part of 
our study a definition of thought is needed. Thought is 
the process of consciously forming beliefs. A belief is a 
mental assertion to the effect that the individual who 
believes has had a certain experience, or will have a cer- 
tain experience, or under certain conditions would have 
a certain experience, or that other conscious beings have 
had or will have, or under conditions might have a cer- 
tain experience. These alternatives exhaust the possi- 
bilities of belief. To believe that anything is, or has 
been, or will be, is to believe in a past or future or pos- 
sible state of consciousness in some being. The limits of 
conceivably possible experience are the limits of belief. 

On their subjective side, 7. e., in their relations to the 
believer himself, beliefs are always the satisfaction of 
individual wants. No belief can be said to be forced upon 
any one in any other sense than that it is accepted be- 
cause it satisfies a conscious want. I say no belief; the 
content of consciousness at any moment, whatever we 
feel to be present in our minds here and now, that is 
forced upon us. But beliefs relate to past, future, or 
possible contents of consciousness. The past, the future, 
the possible, are not immediately given facts. They are 
only assumed facts, fundamental persuasions. As such 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS 113 


they express fundamental wants of consciousness. We 
feel the highest practical interest in holding fast our 
faith that there was a past and will be a future, and that 
our judgments as to the possible have validity. The 
present moment does not satisfy us. It is poor and 
empty. It gains meaning only when we view it as one of 
a series, or as one fact in a world of facts. Therefore, if 
we say we must believe in past and future, we do not in 
general intend to refer to the “must” that expresses the 
absolutely binding force of present momentary knowl- 
edge; but the “‘must”’ expresses a felt need. 

The adjective “true” is applied to a belief by the one 
whose intellectual wants it satisfies, at the time when it 
satisfies them. The satisfaction of an intellectual want 
is attended with the expectation of permanent satisfac- 
tion to be gained from the same belief. To believe sin- 
cerely in anything and to believe that we always shall 
believe in it are one and the same thing. Therefore, by 
the term truth men express a general conception of per- 
manent persuasion. He claims to know the truth about 
any thing, whose convictions about that thing never 
change. The one who possessed absolute truth would 
be the one whose convictions never could change about 
any thing. 

These considerations on the nature of thought are 
necessary to the understanding of voluntary thought- 
progress. But if this be the nature of thought as the 
process of forming beliefs, then thought-progress is to 
be studied much as we study political progress. A sys- 
tem of beliefs is held, just as a system of government 
endures, so long as it seems to the men concerned advan- 
tageous to cling to it. Beliefs change, like institutions, 
when they no longer accomplish the end of their exist- 
ence. And yoluntary progress in thought will exemplify 


114 THE NATURE OF 


those general characteristics of voluntary progress which 
we have already pointed out. That is to say, voluntary 
thought-progress will be possible only when men have 
advanced far enough not merely to possess, but to ana- 
lyze and reflect upon their beliefs. Voluntary thought- 
progress will be conditioned furthermore by a knowledge 
of the way in which new beliefs may be formulated and 
systematized. And a third prerequisite of voluntary 
thought-progress will be the ability to form an ideal of a 
perfect system of beliefs in those matters wherewith the 
thinker is immediately concerned. 

Besides these conditions the same tendencies that ap- 
pear in voluntary progress elsewhere may be supposed 
to exist in case of thought-progress. Normal and ordi- 
nary thought-progress, if our conclusions are right, will 
be characterized by conservatism and optimism. The 
optimism will show itself in a belief that truth in the 
direction of research is attainable. The conservatism 
will tend to preserve established forms of thought, estab- 
lished methods or persuasions, with as little modifica- 
tion as is possible. The four stages or kinds of optimism 
distinguished above may also be distinguished in volun- 
tary thought-progress. There is the individual or per- 
sonal optimism of school boys and enthusiasts generally, 
the optimism of the paradoxical thinker. There is the 
optimism of the disciple of some master, or of the spe- 
cialist. Here the individual knows he is fallible, but 
trusts in the power of his church, or of his school, or of 
his science, to attain truth. This corresponds to the 
optimism of the patriot. Then there is the still more 
skeptical optimism of the man who thinks that, though 
error is vastly in excess of truth in this world, yet the 
truth is certain to win in the long run. The fourth stage 
is what many would call universal skepticism or thought- 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS ith is 


pessimism. Yet it is a familiar fact that absolute skep- 
ticism, the doubting that one doubts, is an impossible 
frame of mind. And in fact the despair that mankind 
will ever attain absolute truth is not at all incompatible 
with an earnest devotion to the interests of science and 
philosophy. The effort to formulate and systematize 
and simplify and generalize our thought, need not be 
given up or pursued with less earnestness when we have 
abandoned the hope of ever perfecting and so ending 
our knowledge. 

If we undertake now to explain in a single formula the 
nature of voluntary thought-progress, we shall, I con- 
ceive, be led to the following: Voluntary progress in 
thought may consist (1) in the modification of old prin- 
ciples or beliefs or conceptions to meet the demands of 
new experience. And since these old beliefs or notions 
are the expression of certain human interests, if the in- 
terests remain the same, the beliefs or notions will be 
altered only so much as is necessary to keep them from 
manifest contradiction with the new experience; and the 
alterations will tend, if possible, to simplify, unify, and 
render homogeneous the old beliefs, so as to make them 
directer expressions of the old systems. (2) Voluntary 
thought-progress may be the formation of new beliefs or 
conceptions different from any before possessed, for the 
sake of meeting the demands of entirely novelexperience. 
And here the interest of thought will be the formation 
of such beliefs or conceptions as will conduce to the 
understanding of all the new experiences with the least 
expenditure of thought-energy. The result will be an 
explanation of the new phenomena by analogy with pre- 
vious phenomena, and the formation of simple and general 
conceptions; and will here be a tendency towards unity 
of conception. (3) Voluntary thought-progress may be 


116 THE NATURE OF 


occasioned by a change in the interests which men take 
in experience. And here the progress will consist in an 
effort to express most simply and with the least waste of 
energy the new interests in terms of new or of old ex- 
perience. Each one of these forms of voluntary thought- 
progress demands a further study. 

a. Progress as the Modification of Old Beliefs. — At 
the time when voluntary progress begins, that is, when 
men first begin to reflect on their thought and its work, 
they find beliefs already existing. We have not, there- 
fore, to explain the origin of belief, but only to see how 
volition modifies it. All these primitive beliefs, I say, 
express human interests. How do they express them? 

In general, a belief expresses a human interest by con- 
cerning itself with those experiences only that appeal to 
this interest, and by bringing these experiences into such 
an order as shall make them most simply and clearly con- 
ceived. In the search for truth, 2. e., for enduring belief, 
our consciousness 1s (1) selective: it pays attention to 
those facts only that affect some one of our interests. 
And (2) on the other hand, consciousness is not merely 
selective, but also a faculty of organization. And to or- 
ganize experience is to treat the greatest possible num- 
ber of data with the greatest uniformity of method, and 
to regard them as examples of the fewest possible dis- 
tinct forms of reality. Every belief will be, therefore, the 
simplest possible adaptation of the facts of experience 
to our desires regarding experience; the easiest possible 
compromise between prejudice and reality. 

But if the same interests continue of which any belief 
is the expression, then modification of the belief can re- 
sult only from the appearance of new facts of experience. 
When the form is no longer adequate to the matter, the 
same interest which realized itself in the old form will 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS 117 


seek a new one. The change from the old form to the 
new one will follow the law of least expense of energy, 
the general law of conservative progress. Instances of 
this process in matters of vague popular opinion could 
easily be found. More interesting, however, would be 
an example furnished by a great epoch in the progress of 
thought. 

As it is true that no single scientific idea springs from 
nothing, so it is true that the whole body of modern 
scientific thought grew by slow degrees out of previous 
non-scientific tendencies that were for the most part 
theological. Let us see how this growth originated. 
Every one would call the origin of modern thought a case 
of voluntary progress. In it were expressed human in- 
terests. But what interests? The mere delight in 
novelty of conceptions? History shows the contrary. 
In its earliest forms modern thought appears indeed as 
the revolt against authority, as the desire to free one’s 
self from Aristotle and from the Church. But what in- 
terest was expressed in this revolt? The same in fact 
that was expressed in the philosophical movements in 
the early Church, in the movements resulting in the 
formation of the orthodox dogmas. The effort was to 
reconcile the religious consciousness of mankind with 
experience and with the universal desire for simplicity 
of conception. The early Church had found itself in the 
possession of certain vague faiths. These had to be for- 
mulated, 7. e., reduced to unity and simplicity. This 
work had been done by the Fathers and the Councils. 
Now, however, the Christian part of mankind was 
brought, by the crusades and by the other world-historic 
events of the time, again face to face with the fact of the 
diversity of religious beliefs, and, by the knowledge of 
antiquity, into the presence of many thought-tenden- 


118 THE NATURE OF 


cies long since forgotten. Variety, contrast, and contra- 
diction, in experience, faith, and dogma, were thus 
brought into view. The variety must be reduced to 
unity, the contrasts understood as different forms of one 
reality, the contradictions got out of sight. The first 
great effort to do this took form in the second period of 
Scholasticism, which found in the conceptions of the 
Aristotelian philosophy, as added to and corrected by the 
dogmas of the Church, the unifying principle which was 
to satisfy the needs of belief. Later, when yet further 
experiences refused to be reconciled with the scholastic 
conceptions, there sprang up the Renascence philoso- 
phy. But this philosophy, though apparently in spirit a 
revolt against the theology of the Church, was unwilling 
to desert the faith entirely. The tendency to reconcile 
new needs with old forms is nowhere better realized 
than in the doctrine of the so-called double truth. The 
Renascence philosophers tried to persuade themselves 
that there could be two kinds of verity, one theological 
and one philosophical. The theological truth they pre- 
ferred to regard as of the higher order. But in addition 
to the data of faith there were to be received the data of 
reason. The contradiction which seemed to exist was 
not to be admitted. Now, to a superficial observer, this 
doctrine of the double truth might indeed seem to be 
growth in the direction of multiplicity and contrast of 
ideas. But in fact the doctrine was an effort to make the 
real multiplicity and contrast given in experience seem 
less than it actually was. When we reflect that the 
thinkers of the Renascence were for the most part sin- 
cere in their doctrine of the double truth, and that by 
the doctrine philosophical truth was viewed as truth of 
a secondary, lower order, and theological truth as the 
one highest revelation of existence, we shall see that in 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS 11g 


so far as in this case there was a growth towards com- 
plexity and contrast of ideas, the growth was involun- 
tary, and that in so far as there was voluntary progress, 
this progress was in the direction of simplicity and har- 
mony of conception. Throughout modern thought we 
should find upon search this same tendency to reduce 
new doctrines to old doctrines, and to conceal as much 
as possible the magnitude of a change when it must be 
made. It is as if the new hated its own existence, and 
would only be reconciled to its place in thought when it 
was able to name its own ancestors and to show itself 
forth as the heir of ancient virtues and rights. Thoughts 
are like men, and dislike to be regarded as creatures of 
yesterday. 

In fine then, voluntary progress in thought follows 
the plan of modifying old conceptions to meet new ex- 
periences, when any such modification is possible. And 
the laws of this kind of voluntary progress are: first, 
the modification is always a minimum, resulting in the 
most favorable compromise possible for the old ideas in 
view of the new data; second, the modification is, so far 
as it is voluntary, a change in the direction of unity, 
simplicity, and homogeneity of thought, as opposed to 
the increase of complexity which naturally would take 
place. 

b. Voluntary Progress as the Formation of New Be- 
liefs. — In previous paragraphs we have been consider- 
ing the process that may be called adaptation, 7. ¢., the 
subordination of new percepts to old concepts. But 
wide as is the use of adaptation it does not satisfy all the 
demands of experience. Old conceptions sometimes fail 
altogether to apply to new experiences. In such cases 
we have the formation of a distinct science or branch 
of science not naturally growing out of any previous 


120 THE NATURE OF 


science; or of a new belief that is not a modification of 
a previous belief. The work of voluntary progress in this 
case is mainly inventive. Fundamental conceptinos 
must be formed, such as will reduce the new phenomena 
to order. What conceptions are chosen? The answer is, 
the simplest conceptions possible. Of two scientific hy- 
potheses equally suggested and confirmed by experience, 
we invariably accept the simpler, in case the difference 
between the two is at all marked. Why do we do this? 
Who has revealed to us that of two methods of doing 
the same thing nature always takes the simpler? No 
one. The so-called axioms, that nature makes no leap, or 
that nature takes the shortest way to every goal, or 
that nature permits no waste, either mean nothing, or 
they are merely postulates of our subjective thought, 
determinations to see in the world simplicity and unity, 
because simplicity and unity of thought mean saving of 
labor for us. 

The result of voluntary progress in this case is, there- 
fore, briefly stated, transition from complexity, hetero- 
geneity, and vagueness of conceptions, to simplicity, 
unity, 7.¢., homogeneity, and definiteness of concep- 
tions. Here then voluntary progress appears again as a 
simplifying process. The law of physical evolution as 
stated by Spencer seems thus to differ from this law of 
voluntary progress, in that while in both cases we have 
growth trom the indefinite to the definite, we find in 
physical evolution growth towards the complex, and in 
voluntary progress growth towards the simple. If na- 
ture loves many contrasting forms of life, thought in 
expressing any one of its interests loves even monotony 
of form in its ideas. 

c. Voluntary Progress with Change of Thought-Inter- 
ests. — Yet experience is not the only changing factor 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS 123 


in the formation of belief. Change of form may be 
caused not only by the appearance of new facts but also 
by an alteration of human interests. In considering 
what bearing these alterations of tendency have upon 
our understanding of voluntary progress, it 1s necessary 
to remember that the change of interest is itself not 
voluntary. Progress, in so far as voluntary, follows cer- 
tain fixed directions; lies, as it were, all in the same 
plane. The causes which change the plane of voluntary 
progress, the directions of its efficacy, cannot be under- 
stood without an appeal to the laws of involuntary 
change; and into the study of these we have not here to 
enter. But when the change of interest has once occurred 
the further process may be in the main voluntary prog- 
ress. 

I mention the class of cases thus defined chiefly to 
point out that certain tendencies in the growth of be- 
liefs which seem to contradict the law before stated, the 
law of conservative progress towards unity and sim- 
plicity with the least expenditure of effort, are in reality 
not exceptions to the general rule. In so far as they are 
voluntary they result from a change of interest. No one 
makes or changes his own desires. The change of his 
interests is an involuntary process. Of the tendencies 
referred to as apparent exceptions to the rule two classes 
occur readily to our minds. There is first the general rule 
that systems of thought once formulated and widely ac- 
cepted, in process of time tend to disintegrate by a kind 
of internal decay of the school that accepted them. The 
second class of cases is the one referred to in the rule 
that opinions develop in rhythms, that the growth of 
thought is in returning cycles. To explain both these 
classes of instances I should adopt the same general 
method. In both of them we have change of interest. 


129 THE NATURE OF 


As for disintegration, the first of the classes of phenom- 
ena mentioned, it is commonly the work of a new 
generation. Young men learn from their masters the 
elaborate doctrines of some system. The doctrines like 
spider webs cover everything valuable in the world of 
thought. If they are accepted as infallible there is little 
more room for individual efforts. But young men must 
have reputations, and they can make them only by 
working for them. Could they have made their reputa- 
tions by building up the old system, nothing would 
have pleased them better. But that cannot be done, be- 
cause it has already been done by their fathers. No 
reputation is to be gained by defending the established 
faith, therefore these young men with one accord tear 
it down or sweep it away, and then fall to fighting over 
the ruins. This is what we call disintegration. It is a 
voluntary progress to be sure, but its peculiar character 
depends upon the change of interest involved. I see, 
therefore, in these instances nothing contradictory to 
the general principle of the conservatism of voluntary 
progress as laid down at the outset of this discussion. In 
so far as voluntary, the new growth is conservative. 
Only so far as it is physically forced by the working of 
extra-volitional psychological laws, is it essentially non- 
conservative. 

The second case, that of the rhythm of opinion, the 
general theory of reactions, is more difficult. To state 
briefly and without proof the way in which I should ex- 
plain the phenomena in question: I should declare re- 
actions in thought-history to be the results, first of 
purely physical causes, either political or economical, 
and secondly, of the fact that the fundamental interests 
of human thought in the explanation of the world are 
not one but various. Any one of these fundamental 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS og 


interests may be obscured at any time by special causes, 
but will be certain to reassert itself again after a while. 
For example: there are two fundamental methods of ex- 
plaining the facts of experience, either by noting their 
relations in so far as the things explained are co-existent, 
or by noting the laws of their sequence. That is, in 
science we study either the nature of phenomena or the 
history of phenomena; we analyze the elements whereof 
reality is composed, or we relate the way in which real 
things change and grow. The type of the one kind of 
study is pure mathematical science, which analyzes ele- 
ments altogether. The type of the other kind of study 
is our modern theory of evolution, which confines itself 
mainly to the study of the history of things. Now the 
antithesis between the mathematical and the historical 
tendencies in thought runs through the whole history of 
belief. Commonly one method is for a while in favor 
and then the other appears prominently once more. The 
change of interest is plain. 

5. Voluntary Progress in Industrial, Political, and 
Moral Activities. —I1I have discussed at considerable 
length voluntary progress in thought, because I regard 
it as a typical case. We must now define what is the 
nature of voluntary interference with growth in indus- 
trial development, politics, and morals, and we must see 
how the simple method of explanation previously sug- 
gested will apply to them all. 

In each of the three types of activity mentioned, there 
are human interests concerned. Industrial activities are 
the expression of the interest in supplying the physical 
wants of individuals. They are the most direct expres- 
sions in ‘society of the instinct of self-preservation. Po- 
litical activities represent the same interest on a higher 
plane of intelligence, with more foresight and more un- 


124 THE NATURE OF 


derstanding of the way in which self-preservation is to 
be furthered by the use of force. Moral activities result 
from an extended interest in conscious life as such, and 
express a desire for the preservation and bettering of 
living beings because they are living beings, and not 
because they are important to one’s self. Voluntary 
progress in carrying on any one of these three kinds of 
activity will be possible only under the conditions men- 
tioned at the outset. Furthermore, voluntary progress 
here will, according to our previous postulate, be at- 
tended by the tendencies already explained, Conserva- 
tism and Optimism. And as a consequence, voluntary 
progress in the forms of trade, of manufacture, of gov- 
ernment, of law, and of morals will tend, in so far forth 
as it is voluntary, towards regularity, unity, homoge- 
neity, simplicity, and of course, definiteness of form. 
And as a further consequence, every change of form will 
be a change forced upon man by external nature, or else 
springing from an involuntary change in those interests 
which are themselves the basis of all voluntary action. 
When the change is forced upon men by external needs, 
it will follow the law of least expenditure of energy. The 
change will be the least that will satisfy the demands of 
experience. When the change is the result of an altera- 
tion of interest, it will again be the least change possible 
that will satisfy the desires. 

These are the conclusions to which we should be led 
according to our theory. Let us now see how they com- 
pare with the facts. The great fact which seems to con- 
tradict our theory is the one expressed in the law of 
differentiation of social functions, or division of labor. 
There seems to be here a tendency towards the manifold, 
and this tendency seems to result from conscious human 
interference. Yet in speaking of division of labor we 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS 125 


surely must not forget the principle according to which 
labor is divided. In differentiating social functions, 
surely we are not differentiating social aims; and volun- 
tary progress seeks homogeneity of action viewed in re- 
lation to aim. Because our occupations are various, no 
one imagines that our fundamental objects are as vari- 
ous as our labors. There is not one virtue for the miller 
and another for the schoolmaster and another for the 
official. It was a cruder system of ethics, an imperfect 
understanding of the meaning of division of labor, that 
led Plato to distinguish the virtues of one class from 
those of another, or Aristotle to the doctrine that some 
men are born to be slaves and must of right remain so. 
Again before the differentiation of trades, every man 
would have his own way of satisfying each one of his 
needs, of hunting, or fishing, or making arms. Or if 
there were uniformity of method among different indi- 
viduals, that would be only because voluntary progress 
had already been at work, simplifying methods. But 
when trades are differentiated, then all of a trade work 
alike. The manifold wants that previously existed and 
that are by nature and not by volition manifold, are 
satisfied as before, but by uniform and simple means. 
Civilization, indeed, increases vastly the number of 
wants, and so the number of trades. But this evolution 
of conscious needs is not itself voluntary. In fact, we 
may distinguish in this matter of the division of labor 
two tendencies at work, one voluntary, tending towards 
unity, one tending towards multiplicity, but involun- 
tary. Voluntary is the division of labor in so far forth 
as it is an organizing of labor. Whoever brings into a 
state of society where labor was undivided and so indefi- 
nitely heterogeneous in character, because dependent 
for its form and time and success upon the caprice and 


126 THE NATURE OF 


ignorance of individuals, a plan for assigning to each in- 
dividual his particular work, and for giving him reason 
to carry it on steadily and systematically, such a re- 
former does not make the structure of society more het- 
erogeneous, but less so. The same work was previously 
done, but done badly. There was the same variety of 
tasks to be performed, only no one had united the efforts 
of men and so none of the tasks were completely accom- 
plished. There was the heterogeneity of tasks, and there 
was the heterogeneity of individuals, who did not co- 
operate because they could not agree upon their ends, 
and there was the heterogeneity of occupations for each 
one. Organization of labor is the unifying of labor. On 
the other hand, the division of labor is an involuntary 
process in so far forth as it corresponds to a multiplica- 
tion of needs, such as must take place in civilization. If 
new trades arise because men need new things, there is 
indeed growth towards variety, but the will:of man is 
not responsible for the variety. Whoever is able to dis- 
tinguish between tendencies or desires and deliberate 
efforts to satisfy desire, will be able to see that the mul- 
tiplication of interests is not itself a voluntary process. 

When we pass from general considerations to a more 
special study of these classes of voluntary progress, we 
find in case of each special exemplifications of the law. 
There is space only for a brief discussion of certain phe- 
nomena of voluntary progress in political institutions. 
Here, to be sure, the facts are very complicated, but the 
tendency towards unity seems to me plain. The greatest 
foe to voluntary progress everywhere, and especially in 
politics and morals, is the selfishness of individuals. The 
tendency of selfishness is towards diversity, but only be- 
cause of the diversity of individuals. The most selfish 
will, in so far as it has definite interests, sets towards 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS 127 


unity. A higher order of volition is that which, recog- 
nizing the waste of labor involved in conflict, seeks to 
save labor by harmony. Political progress consists in 
harmonizing and unifying the desires of men. I regard 
that view of human nature as very one-sided which 
holds the normal condition of mankind to be even now 
one of wartare. Conflict of interests is deliberately 
tolerated only so long as no way out of it is seen. The 
normal condition of men who seek progress at all may be 
considered as a condition of continual search for such 
aims as are broad enough and mighty enough to fill the 
whole of their lives. Show men one who is stronger than 
they, and they will follow and assist him, not because 
he has conquered them, but because they delight in 
strength. Now this willingness to join in whatever un- 
dertaking promises magnitude of result with unity of 
aim, shows itself in political growth wherever such 
growth is aftected by conscious volition. The state de- 
pends not wholly upon physical force, but also upon the 
fact that its physical force takes certain definite and 
uniform traditional channels whenever exercised. The 
traditions of a constitution express the national aims as 
distinguished from the caprice of individual legislators 
or subjects. The state is sure of support so long as the 
constitution is adhered to and is not obsolete. Dread of 
the sovereign power is subordinate to the real gaurantee 
of national permanence, viz., desire for simple and uni- 
form methods of carrying on the affairs of life. 

If the state itself is the expression of the unifying tend- 
ency, political growth shows the same tendency. For it 
must be admitted that the normal development of any 
one government, when undisturbed by conflicting class 
interests, is toward centralization. But any one govern- 
ment in its normal development shows voluntary prog- 


128 THE NATURE OF 


ress without change of the interests involved. And 
centralization means unity. Again the functions of gov- 
ernment seem slowly but surely extending. Our own 
governments in this country are new, and their functions 
small. Hasty legislation, too, produces popular disap- 
pointment and reactions in favor of limiting even the 
few governmental powers already existent. In all na- 
tions ignorance of the means of organizing work under 
government direction limits the tendency, and makes 
socialistic ideals seem for the present idle if not wicked 
fancies. But slowly the unifying process goes on. Once 
every one was his own policeman. Later every one 
employed his own mail carrier. For a yet longer time 
every one was his own schoolmaster, or else found his 
teachers by supporting private enterprises. Now, police 
and mails and schools are largely in the hands of the gov- 
ernment. England adds the telegraph service and the 
post office savings banks to the functions of government. 
Elsewhere railroads are under government control. 
Where will the process end? I see no limit but human 
ignorance and our present incapacity for organizing 
labor. | 

But, says someone, the ideal is after all progress to- 
wards human freedom. Human freedom is a personal 
affair. Man cannot be free; men must be. I reply that 
if individual freedom means limitless eccentricity, indi- 
viduality without other aim than to be peculiar, then 
this tendency towards a savage diversity of wills and 
aims and thoughts is one that cannot be contemplated 
without horror. Individual freedom we indeed desire 
for all the world. But our desire means this, that, as we 
hold, in an ideal state every one would give himself up 
to whatever work were before him, every one would feel 
that the world’s ends were his ends, and no human will 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS 129 


would be coerced by another, because perfect submis- 
sion would be the attitude of every one. That is, the 
desire for freedom as an universally desirable end, is 
nothing more than a desire for perfect harmony and ab- 
sence of conflict. So long as there is conflict in the world, 
there never will be perfect freedom. In a conflict some 
one is always vanquished. The ideal of freedom is, 
therefore, just like the socialistic ideal when properly 
understood, the ideal of a state of things wherein men 
should be in harmony and wherein their ends should be 
one and their social forms so homogeneous as not to pro- 
duce conflict. Both ideals are alike impracticable, and 
alike useful as ideals. There is, to be sure, no reason to 
suppose that men will not always actually be at variance, 
striving and miserable. That they will sometime be 
better off than they are now may be hoped; and when 
they are better off, there will be, no doubt, much more 
unity in government, language, and customs, much more 
centralization of the functions of government, much 
more organization of labor, much more interest on the 
part of every man in the welfare of the whole of con- 
scious life, in fine much more of unity than there is now. 
For such is the nature of deliberate volition, this great 
agency of economy and unity. If that could work un- 
trammeled the end would be certain. And on the other 
hand, there is no reason to suppose that men will ever 
be much happier than they are now, unless their de- 
liberate volition interpose to make them so. 

6. Summary and Conclusion. — That in voluntary 
progress there is a law of what we have called the Con- 
servatism of Social Forms; that when torms are altered 
the alteration takes place with the least expenditure of 
energy; that voluntary progress adds to its conservatism 
some one of the forms of optimism; that voluntary prog- 


130 THE NATURE OF 


ress is thus in every way characterized by a tendency 
to simplify the structure of society; that evolution as 
modified by the deliberate volition of men differs from 
physical evolution in being everywhere a growth to- 
wards unity and homogeneity of actions considered in 
reference to their ends; that finally growth in the direc- 
tion of the complex is always involuntary growth, in so 
far as it is growth in this direction: these are the prin- 
cipal results which this paper has tried to make probable 
and to illustrate. 

At the close of the whole investigation two reflections 
arise. Is the universal goal of voluntary progress as we 
have defined it one that is after all worth seeking? And 
again, if worth seeking, is it ultimately attainable, or is 
man condemned to an endless and hopeless warfare with 
a nature that seeks limitless diversity of form, and that 
delights in conflict, while he seeks unity of form, and 
wishes harmony? As to the first question, it seems as if 
the simplicity and unity which we all are seeking would, 
if we attained it, appear to us a tedious and intolerable 
monotony; that the goal of voluntary progress, if 
reached, would be soon cast aside as worthless; and that 
the change of interest of which we spoke above, would 
eternally goad us onward in a never ending pursuit of 
phantoms. I admit this contradiction, which I consider 
inseparable from every theory of voluntary action. Itis 
the nature of the human will to be content with nothing 
that it possesses, and to be always looking for something 
new. A theory of ends and motives cannot be refuted by 
saying that were the ends attained, new motives would 
arise and new ends be sought. Pictures of enduring 
happiness always fail. Happiness is best pictured as a 
transient moment. Our theory suffers, in the contra- 
diction pointed out, only what long since happened to 


VOLUNTARY PROGRESS 131 


the old ideas of the state of the blessed in heaven, 
whereof Schopenhauer remarks that when every defi- 
nite torment had been banished to hell, there was left 
nothing but the dreariest monotony for the picture of 
bliss. To say that no goal would satisfy us, is to say 
that unrest, dissatisfaction, is an eternal part of con- 
scious life. Sometimes we are content to be forever 
active, and sometimes we rebel against the fact that we 
are finite, and say that conscious life is a failure. So 
long as we are at work we incline to the former opinion. 
Whichever one is the fairer, the problem involved is 
everlasting. 

As to the second question, whether we can ever tri- 
umph over nature, and whether she will not always tear 
down whatever we build up, the only answer is, the zg- 
noramus et ignorabimus with which a distinguished sci- 
entific investigator some years ago expressed his sense of 
the “limits of human knowledge.” In so far as nature 
is responsible for the pain and evil that there is in life, I 
see no reason for being confident that good will ever tri- 
umph over evil in more than a very restricted sense. If 
at any moment there were triumph we could not be cer- 
tain of its permanence. According to our present notion 
of the universe, we stand alone, a few specks of life in the 
darkness of infinite space, in the midst of nature forces 
whose resources we shall never more than very meagerly 
estimate, with an unknown future before us, in which 
what appalling accidents may happen, we can never 
even with faint show of accuracy foresee. But if the 
triumph of the good is uncertain, if voluntary progress 
is always a venturing into a mysterious future, there is 
no reason why we should on that account work less 
vigorously, or make our aims less lofty. It is a cowardly 
soul that needs the certainty of success before it will 


132. NATURE OF VOLUNTARY PROGRESS 


work. It is a craven who despairs and does nothing be- 
cause what he can do may turn out a failure. Whatever 
future growth eliminates from human nature, it is to be 
hoped that one trace of the era of universal warfare will 
survive, namely, the courage that can face possible, even 
probable destruction, with the delight of a hero in resist- 
ing and planning and working so long as he can raise his 
arm. 


THE PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE 
OF PESSIMISM 


[ 1879 ] 


XPERIENCE is too narrow to furnish us answers 
H to all the great problems of life. We constantly 
take refuge, therefore, in theories, hypotheses, 
opinions, sentiments. I know of no thinker of any sig- 
nificance who 1s satisfied to state what he knows; every 
thinker, one might say every man of character, is driven, 
by the force of his own life as a thinker, to add to experi- 
ence hypothesis, to fact opinion, to certainty conjecture. 
And indeed no one who has reflected much on the 
phenomena of our consciousness will find in this tend- 
ency to anticipate or to complete experience a tendency 
in itself either exceptional or dangerous. All thinking in 
its very nature as mental activity, 1s necessarily a tran- 
scending of direct experience. We think of things and of 
laws, of causes and of effects, of obligations and of 
rights, of qualities good and evil, of matter and of mind, 
of time and of space, of the atom and of the universe; 
and yet these objects of thought are none of them ob- 
jects of direct experience; they are one and all, as 
thought-objects, creations of the thought that thinks 
them. He who should desire to limit himself strictly to 
sense-experience in all his thought, would indeed havea 
very simple task; for he would then never think at all. 
The tendency to transcend experience is, therefore, in 
itself not merely justifiable, but indispensable. We have 
only to look well to our footsteps that in leaving the path 
of experience we wander not into the wilderness of pure 
fancy. Experience without thought is, to use Kant’s 
somewhat worn epithet, blind. But thought without a 


134. THE PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE 


basis of experience is, as the same thinker had it, empty. 
To transcend experience you must first be in possession 
of experience. 

I preface these remarks for the sake of indicating what 
I conceive to be the position of a certain doctrine or 
theory of life to which I propose to ask your attention. 
This doctrine transcends experience and is not ashamed 
to do so. One must judge it, if at all, as an hypothesis. 
One must see whether it has the proper basis in experi- 
ence; and one must also see whether, in so far as it rises 
beyond the region of experience, it is a structure of true 
wisdom. One must treat with it upon its own ground, 
and expect from it only what it attempts to perform. I 
refer to the doctrine known as Pessimism. This, as a 
view of life in its entirety, is necessarily beyond the 
reach of immediate verification or refutation. Every- 
one must study the matter from his own point of view 
and must employ the power of his own insight. The 
best result he can hope to reach will be a probable result. 

With this in mind then, we shall enter upon our task 
and consider as briefly as may be, four points: viz., First, 
What is the doctrine known as Pessimism? Secondly, 
Where and in what forms does it appear in human 
thought? Thirdly, What case, if any, can be made out 
in favor of a Pessimistic doctrine? Fourthly, What is the 
true value and significance of the doctrine regarded in 
its relations to human life? Upon the last point, I need 
not say, the most stress is to be laid; and all the other 
considerations but prepare the way for the one principal 
problem. 

First then, what is Pessimism? 

By Pessimism is meant nowadays a doctrine that sees 
in human life or in sentient life in general a preponder- 
ance of evil, that regards this evil as a necessary part of 


OF PESSIMISM 136 


life, and that in consequence considers such life as there 
is as worse than no life at all. To be sure, this would not 
be Pessimism in the strictest etymological sense of the 
word. According to the etymology Pessimism would 
have to be the doctrine that regards the life that is as 
the worst possible or conceivable life; so that a worse 
state than the present could not be imagined. Yet this 
extreme view is seldom if ever held. It is enough that, 
in the usage of the day, Pessimism is the doctrine that 
looks upon the condition of sentient life as so full of evil, 
that a cessation of this life would be preferable to a con- 
tinuance. On the one hand, then, Pessimism is a theory 
of life as we see it about us at present. This life is found 
by the pessimist to have in it an excess of evil over good. 
On the other hand, however, Pessimism is a doctrine of 
life considered in its nature, apart from any reference to 
time. The philosophic pessimist is he who finds an ex- 
cess of evil over good, not merely in life as it is at present 
constituted, but in life as it must be at all times. Pessi- 
mism then declares that life, not your life nor mine, 
not this life nor that, not the life of the present, nor the 
life of the past, nor the life of the future, but life is in its 
essence and of necessity an evil, and were better brought 
to an end. Such is the doctrine as defined according to 
the recognized use of the term. 

We note immediately one important mark that 
characterizes Pessimism as thus defined. Pessimism is, 
you will observe, in this narrower sense, not the expres- 
sion of a mood, but of a doctrine. The philosophic pes- 
simist, therefore, need not be of necessity any less fortu- 
nate or happy than the rest of his race. He founds his 
opinion upon observation or upon speculative doctrine. 
He intends this observation or doctrine to be perfectly 
impartial and all-embracing. He does not neglect the 


136 \THE PRACTICAL SIGNIEFICANGE 


fact of happiness, but analyzes this like all other phe- 
nomena of feeling. He finds reason for holding that 
happiness is a transient and subordinate form of con- 
scious life. Holding this view on general grounds he is 
not confirmed or refuted in it by his own personal expe- 
riences. If he is made happy by some event, that does 
not cause him to be the less a pessimist. He already 
knew that there is a thing called happiness, and that 
many share in its blessings. But he had studied this 
something called happiness, and had found it of less sig- 
nificance as an element of life than is its opposite, misery. 
His own passing mood is no refutation of his philosophic 
opinion. If you find him merry and self-satisfied you 
may not accuse him of inconsistency. His doctrine re- 
ferred to the universe, not to himself. He may be an 
exceptionally favored being, knowing little of adversity. 
Only so much the more perhaps, has he had leisure to 
contemplate with calmness the nature of life, and to 
pass an unbiased judgment. I mention this here only 
that our minds may be quite clear as to the question at 
issue. I shall consider no mere frame of mind, no mere 
morbid outgrowth of individual misfortune, but a 
reasoned theory. One may no longer look upon Pessi- 
mism as a distemper to be treated pathologically when 
it is found in company with an unhappy career, or 
laughed at as an inconsistency if the pessimistic thinker 
himself has been a happy man. Pessimism in our day 
has risen from the heart to the head; and the problem is 
now an essential part of Moral Philosophy. 
Historically considered, Pessimism is a very ancient 
tendency, but not a very ancient doctrine. Again and 
again, in literature of high antiquity, you meet with ex- 
pressions that imply or that seem to imply, theories of 
life in the main pessimistic; yet a philosophic doctrine of 


OF PESSIMISM 137 


Pessimism is in Europe the product of the present cen- 
tury. The experience upon which Pessimism is more or 
less remotely based has long been noted and in part 
appreciated; yet a combination of circumstances has 
prevented any one from isolating, generalizing and for- 
mulating an abstract doctrine of Pessimism on the basis 
of these experiences. If one may be allowed to sum up in 
an abstract formula the numerous half-conscious pessi- 
mistic tendencies of literature, one may perhaps state 
the commonest prephilosophic form of our tendency 
thus: Evil predominates in life, because life is uncertain 
and brief. We constantly long for what is unattainable, 
simply because we desire to rise above the transient, 
yet are doomed to discover that everything 1s fleeting. 
However happy the hour may be, the morrow finds you 
mourning over its loss. However strong and promising 
the young plant, the decay of old age comes and checks 
all development. However desirable even the life of 
memory and restful contemplation, death robs one of 
this only remaining treasure. All flesh is as grass. Men 
are like the leaves of the forest. 

In a hundred shapes you meet this same thought re- 
peated in ancient literature. “Few and evil have the 
days of the years of my life been” — “The days of our 
years are three score and ten years; and if by reason of 
strength they be four score years yet is their strength 
labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off and we fly away.” 
These from the Hebrew writings that have so deeply 
affected the consciousness of the world in later times; 
and one need not stop to remind you of the comfortless 
gloom of the confessions of a worldling as they have been 
aptly called, preserved in the book of Ecclesiastes, or of 
the noble despondency of the book of Job. A like under- 


current of gloom was not unknown to Greek literature 


138) LHEGERAC RIGA TSIGNITIGANGE 


at an early period; and Greek philosophy, if it never 
formulated pessimism as modern philosophy has done, 
yet did very soon set about the study of the problems 
involved, and produced more than one doctrine that 
lacked but the universal insight of modern times to be- 
come Pessimism itself. Though to Buddhism belongs 
the melancholy glory of having made a doctrinal pes- 
simism a fundamental religious dogma, yet we cannot 
take this development into consideration now, for to us 
Europeans Buddhism has been known only since the 
early part of the present century, and then but im- 
perfectly. 

The typical form of the pessimistic tendency as just 
described finds some variation in the mind of more than 
one of Shakespeare’s characters; and we may take cer- 
tain well-known expressions of theirs as representing yet 
another noteworthy phase of literary pessimism. Here 
we have no longer merely the fleeting character of hu- 
man life, the inevitable decay, held up as the one source 
of evil; the negative criticism cuts deeper. It is not that 
life were better if there were more of it; but when 
Shakespeare, in the course of his all-embracing studies 
of human feeling, finds occasion to copy and to embedy 
the pessimistic mood, he chooses often to express the 
pessimist’s emotion in the form of an attack on every 
moment of life. There is, we read in some passages of 
Shakespeare, no significance in any part of life, much 
less in the whole. We are such stuff as dreams are made 
of. Life is but a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and 
fury yet signifying nothing. Or again, the whole con- 
sists in this, that from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, and 
then from hour to hour we rot and rot; wherein of course 
the one process is just as important and just as con- 
temptible as the other. Here you have a new thought 


OF PESSIMISM 139 


introduced. The worth of life is to be judged on the 
basis of an examination of the significance of the indi- 
vidual moments. 

Modern literary pessimism just before Schopenhauer 
took still a different form, that of the so-called Welt- 
schmerz, or pessimism of personal despair. This, the 
pessimism of Goethe’s Werther, of Heine, of the Byronic 
period in England, is in no wise a philosophic view of the 
universe; but arises in and expresses simply the indi- 
vidual disgust with life. In the introduction to Alfred 
de Musset’s Confessions of a Child of the Century, you 
have a picture briefly and feelingly drawn of this mood. 
W eltschmerz became then at this time a kind of epidemic, 
founded not in a sense of the universal in life, but rather 
in a common experience of the evils of protracted war, 
bad government, unsettled beliefs, artificial society, and 
the lack of objective stimulus. We must not confound 
this tendency with the one first represented by Arthur 
Schopenhauer, the founder and greatest expositor of a 
pessimistic philosophy in Europe. We therefore leave 
now the pessimism of the heart and come to that of the 
head. 

Schopenhauer finds the essence of life to consist in the 
active or desiring principle of consciousness, called by 
him the Will. Life is made up, according to Schopen- 
hauer, of a continual flight from one object of desire or 
interest to another. What we know serves as but the 
instrument of our will. Knowledge is always a subordi- 
nate phenomenon of mind. We are constantly in some 
degree in a state of longing. Without a consciousness of 
desire, of unrest greater or less, no life. Now pleasure is 
satisfied desire. Without a desire preceding, no satis- 
faction, and so no pleasure. Hence, pleasure is negative. 
The only positive element in consciousness 1s the longing. 


140 THE PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE 


Resist, overcome, deny or put to rest the longing, by 
moral or physical means, and you have what is called 
satisfaction or enjoyment. What we always enjoy is then 
the momentary freedom we attain. When we feel pleas- 
ure it is that we have for the time one desire the less. 
What then is the worth of life? —The highest worth con- 
ceivable is precisely zero. The end of life, the desirable, 
the highest pleasure would be attained were we free 
from all desire. But to be free from all desire were to 
cease to live. On the other hand, however, pain is the 
consciousness of yet unsatisfied longing. Pain then is 
necessarily united to all desire. Pain accompanies all 
life. Pain greater or less is the birthright of every man. 
Pain and strife each one inherits from his parents; these 
are at once the marks and the punishment of the true 
original sin, which is the desire for life. So long as one 
lives he desires to live; for that is his nature, the blind 
impulse he cannot control. But so long as he desires, he 
suffers. The positive quality of life is its painfulness. 
Happiness means at best more or less relief, more or less 
rest from the inevitable toil. Happiness as a positive 
possession there is none. 

In the briefest statement, this is the basis of Schopen- 
hauer’s pessimism. You see that we have here a doc- 
trine founded on an analysis of consciousness. With 
the analysis you will doubtless disagree; but with the 
general method of attacking the problem you must 
needs be content. There is no other way of studying the 
worth of life than by examining the very root and sub- 
stance of conscious life. 

Schopenhauer’s theory of the negative nature of pleas- 
ure has been modified, elaborated, and strengthened 
by a lengthy empirical examination of the facts of life in 
the numerous writings of the still young but already 


OF PESSIMISM 141 


famous Edward von Hartmann of Berlin, whose PAz/os- 
ophy of the Unconscious has just entered on its second 
decade of life (first edition published in 1868), whose 
following is large and in a way influential, and whose 
doctrine is in many respects quite original. But I cannot 
go further with this historical account. You see at any 
rate that the pessimistic assault on the worth of life has 
taken two great forms, that of personal mood or impres- 
sion, that of reasoned analysis of consciousness. The 
former led of necessity to the latter; and with the latter 
alone we shall now concern ourselves. 

It simplifies the problem of the worth of life if we be- 
gin with the individual. Take any individual, as Caius 
Consider him for a moment as the center of the world 
See what would be meant by the worth of life for him. 
See in how far he may hope to obtain the goods of life in 
case he 1s favored by fortune. If it is impossible that in 
this simplest conceivable instance his life should be 
made worth living, then we may well despair of seeing 
the problem of life solved where the clashing of the in- 
terests of various individuals is introduced. If, however, 
the problem finds satisfactory solution here, we may 
with hope and reason search further. 

You note that I do not suppose Caius alone in the 
world, but only, for the moment, of more importance 
than any one else. Let the relations of life be as compli- 
cated for him as you will; only let us make those rela- 
tions subservient solely to his interests. Can Catus as 
monarch of all things attain to a truly satisfactory and 
worthy life? 

First then, as monarch of all things, Caius can obtain 
for himself all sorts of sense-gratifications. We suppose 
his physical organism sound, his wit uncommonly great, 
his capacity for enjoyment as keen as possible in case 


142), THE PRACTICATTSIGNIBICAN GE 


of a human being. His life is long. Death ends it to be 
sure; but death comes to him easily, and Caius is above 
slavish fears. He can live in ease and plenty if he so 
wills; he can enjoy the help and society of his fellowmen 
to his heart’s content; for are they not his own? Now if 
Caius chooses the life of sensuous gratification, and 
gains his end, will his life viewed in itself be worth 
living? 

We answer no, not because the books for children say 
no; but because we can see by examination that nothing 
to be called worth can here be found. Our argument 
shall take into account, of course, only this life and only 
Caius; yet the worthlessness of sense-gratification can 
easily be made evident. For each moment of enjoyment 
unless remembered as enjoyment and counted as his 
own enjoyment is worth nothing to Catus. Our sense- 
enjoyment can be spoken of as valuable only when we 
know afterwards that we personally have enjoyed. 
Make me intoxicated or give me nitrous oxide so that 
my memory is for the time destroyed, and then tell me 
afterwards that I showed signs of feeling very pleasant 
sensations while I was in this state; and this past enjoy- 
ment will be counted by me as of no worth. I did not 
enjoy anything, I then say. Else would I remember. 
There may have been transient sensations of pleasure. 
They are now nothing to me. They are no more mine 
than are the pleasures of Alexander the Great. For me 
they are insignificant, since my memory does not pre- 
serve them. Nor would I choose them in future. Ob- 
livion I might seek to avoid violent pain; but I never 
would look either backwards or forwards with any in- 
terest to a feeling of pleasure that must vanish from 
memory the very instant it had been felt. Self-con- 
sciousness then at least must be present, if I am to de- 


OF PESSIMISM 143 


clare a certain pleasure of sense at all a worthy event in 
life. I must remember and say, this I enjoyed; this was 
mine. 

If sense-gratification is worth nothing without mem- 
ory and self-consciousness to retain and to recognize it, 
what will the pleasures of Caius be worth to him in so 
far as he does retain and recognize them? Will they 
then be valuable objects of pursuit? Still the same 
answer. Even here a little analysis shows them of no 
value. For here Schopenhauer’s argument recurs in a 
modified form. To know I had or shall have pleasure, is 
to compare my present with a past or future state. But 
when I remember gratifications past I am usually more 
or less in a quiescent state without great present pleas- 
ure. My memory is at the same time a recognition of 
the difference between the ideal and the real satisfac- 
tion, between the memory and the present. My mem- 
ory of my own past pleasure is then of its nature a desire 
to repeat the experience. The like holds true of the ex- 
pectation of future pleasure as our own. We recognize 
the expected pleasure as to be our own only by feeling 
a desire to reach it, an incompleteness in the present 
state. Or in Schopenhauer’s form again, the pleasure 
appears as gratified desire, and the desire as a sense of 
pain or incompleteness in the present. Hence, if Caius 
does remember and recognize his past sense-gratifica- 
tions as his own, he does so only by recognizing his 
present condition as imperfect, and his pleasures as 
possible means of completing his imperfection. His 
pleasure is turned to gall by the very mental process 
that makes it his own, for that very mental process im- 
plies that it is no longer his own. 

Hence, then, the dilemma. If Caius lives the life of 
sense-gratification, he will either fly on from moment to 


144. THE PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE 


moment, never reflecting, never pausing to attain a 
clear self-consciousness; and then his gratifications are 
as worthless as the unremembered pleasant sensations 
of a drunken man, and die as soon as they are born; or 
he will reflect and recognize his gratifications as his own, 
and then they will appear as past, as not now his, as no 
longer within his reach, or as future, as not yet attained, 
as objects of longing; and thus he recognizes the pleasure 
as his own only in so far forth as he feels the present 
lack of it, feels want or pain. Whichever horn of the 
dilemma Caius accepts, his life of sense-gratification 
turns out worthless. 

This argument would apply equally well to all forms 
of individual enjoyment that Caius might choose to pur- 
sue, unless there be an exception in favor of the con- 
sciousness of fullness and breadth of self-development. 
This latter object of life we must yet consider. Perhaps 
Caius, giving up the search for enjoyment, proposes to 
seek for completeness depth and force of life, in a word, 
for a grander and higher self. We all have some notion 
of what such a search means. It is in part the search for 
what we call manifold experience, it is also what we un- 
derstand under the search after the formation of a high 
character. It is the striving to be individually all that 
we possibly can. 

If Caius then, instead of passing his life in the search 
for pleasure, determines to seek a perfected Self, and to 
make that his object, will he now be able as monarch 
of all resources to attain to a satisfactory and worthy 
life? 

That the individual pleasures could never sum up into 
a worthy lite we saw, because in order to give the indi- 
vidual pleasures worth at all, reflection was necessary. 
And reflection 1s of its nature opposed to enjoyment, and 


OF PESSIMISM 145 


so recognizes pleasures as of worth only by opposing to 
them the empty and worthless present of the reflection 
itself. So that as much is lost in longing or lament as is 
gained in satisfaction. A like argument applies how- 
ever to the worth of a successful struggle for self-de- 
velopment. To recognize our self-development as in 
itself a worthy object of striving, we must be able to do 
two things: First, to see some absolute worth in a given 
grade of self-attainment or self-perfection; Second, to 
compare our state at any one time with our previous 
state of development, or with a higher stage of develop- 
ment. These two things are necessary, I say, the first as 
a condition for our finding self-development a worthy 
end at all, the second as a means of measuring our prog- 
ress in reaching the goal. At some stage of our evolu- 
tion we must be able to say, “here I have attained an 
absolute good”’; else wherein lies the worth of striving? 
But, at each previous stage we must be able to measure 
our progress and to say: “in that direction lies the goal; 
and I am so and so far from it.”’ Now this second power 
of mind, the power of contrasting our actual attainment 
with something lower and with something higher, 1s 
necessary indeed to our progress, but it is of its nature 
opposed to our ever regarding any attained state as an 
absolute good. Reach a given state, and no matter what 
you thought of its worth before you attained it, you are 
no sooner there than you forthwith begin to compare it 
with other states. Higher it is indeed than previous 
states of attainment; but that furnishes no reason why 
you should regard it as of absolute worth. The same 
desire tor the higher that has led you to it, drives you 
beyond it. You see how much lower it is than some state 
just beyond, and on you press once more. This cease- 
less activity may be very praiseworthy from the point of 


146 THE PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE 


view of the ethical teacher; but what is the significance 
of the matter, when viewed as a mere fact of nature, 
apart from its practical usefulness? The significance is 
that there can be no worthy end attained in this activity 
of self-development, because there is no end attained at 
all. Goals of endeavor here turn out to be illusions. 
They are goals so long as you have not reached them. 
Reach them and you find them no goals at all, but un- 
satisfying and imperfect conditions from which you flee 
in unappeased discontent. Nor let it be said, as so many 
have said, that the true worth in this case lies not in the 
states attained but in the struggle to attain them. 
What this can mean, I know not. It may be true enough 
that struggle is better than lethargy; but our present 
question is: What is either of them worth? Perfect 
rest after toil may be indeed worth less morally than the 
toil. But we wish to know now what the toil is worth. 
Toil, conflict, endeavor, these imply object, do they 
not? No one believes in toil and conflict that are known 
to be perfectly objectless. But now what is the object? 
The attainment of some higher state? Yes, we suppose 
some one to answer. Then the higher state gives worth 
to the struggle? Yes. The higher state is an absolute 
good then? Yes. Why then would it not be well to re- 
main in this higher state when you have reached it, to 
enjoy the fruits of victory, to rest? Oh, that would be 
lethargy, indolence. To try to remain in the higher 
state without pressing on further would be to fall from 
that state, to cease to enjoy it. When we have attained 
the prize of this conflict we must forthwith begin a new 
conflict. We may not stop to enjoy the prize. So then, 
this conflict is all for the sake of a prize that you can 
never hope to enjoy. You seek constantly for a higher 
state in which you will never be able to rest peacefully. 


OF PESSIMISM 147 


You are warring for an illusion. You fight for a kingdom 
that exists but in your dreams. 

But, one says, as Caius, in seeking this self-develop- 
ment gains some higher state, he is able to enjoy this 
state at the very time he is battling for a yet higher 
state. He need not rest in order to enjoy; he enjoys the 
attained, even while he is striving for the next higher. 
To this I can but answer that, if Caius is really in earnest 
I know not what such sham fights can mean. Caius has 
sought for the end A; his search has been earnest; he has 
attained it. Now we find him fighting for the higher 
end B. We question him: Caius, are you in earnest 
about the goal B, or is this only shamming, just to keep 
your fighting arm in trim for war? No, he says, I am in 
earnest. I want B most truly. Does not A satisfy you 
then, Caius? No, how should it? I possess A; and nobody 
can be satisfied with what he possesses. The satisfac- 
tory is always what a man has not. Do you then enjoy 
the end A at all? I do, in this sense at least, that I 
would not part with it. I should feel its loss sadly. But 
Caius, is this true enjoyment of A? Must not the sum of 
conscious life be either positive or negative? Can it be 
both at once? If the longing, the lack you now feel as to 
B, is as great as the longing and lack you once felt as toA 
before you sought for B, perhaps greater, how has your 
condition been bettered by gaining A? How can you be 
said to enjoy A, when the sum of your whole conscious- 
ness of satisfaction and longing is still negative, and at 
least as great a negative quantity as before? Our con- 
dition of weal or woe is measured not by what we have, 
but by what we want; just as the toil in mountain climb- 
ing for a given day is measured, not by our height above 
the sea level at the moment of starting, but by our depth 
below the point at which we aim. What would be my 


148 THE PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE 


gain if, in climbing the sides of an infinite mountain, I 
left untold thousands of feet of elevation behind me, and 
yet eternally seemed to see my desired goal just one 
thousand feet above me? The one thousand feet lacking 
would be worth more than all the thousands attained. 
Thus, then, Caius, you are now wretched, having A. 
Nor will you be less wretched, possessing B; for beyond 
B there is a C, and beyond C a D; and the alphabet of 
the infinite never reaches its Z. While you seek higher 
individual attainment, you shall long and suffer, and 
never attain. | 

Nor is this the only argument in the case. Our satis- 
faction in a lower condition is doubtless much greater 
than our satisfaction in a higher condition when we at- 
tain that condition. For our satisfaction in our attain- 
ments is decreased with the increase of our insight. 
When our attainments are so small that we ourselves 
have not yet the power of self-measurement, our satis- 
faction with our condition may be considerable. But at 
a certain point in our progress we attain the power to 
estimate, quantitatively and qualitatively, the actual 
amount of our possessions. With this power to estimate, 
comes the consciousness that our powers are finite. 
Before we estimated, our mental possession seemed in- 
definitely great. As soon as we estimate, we learn how 
limited the whole treasure is. No development after this 
can ever restore to the individual his former naive con- 
fidence in his own immense worth. In other words, in 
that Caius sets about the task of self-development, he 
only passes further and further, at every step, from the 
only stage in which he could fairly enjoy his self-develop- 
ment. 

But finally, leaving out of account the impossibility 
of any genuine satisfaction in the growth of Self, leaving 


OF PESSIMISM 149 


out of account both that an infinite series of goals will 
exist, and that self-criticism will on every higher stage 
destroy all the fruits gained by the striving upwards, 
omitting, I say, all reference to these things, there will 
yet remain another cause for dissatisfaction with the 
results of self-education. Other selves than Caius will 
exist; and be he master of these others or not, he will 
strive in vain to equal with his own growth the immense 
riches of life embodied in these hosts of humanity. Do 
what he will he shall forever feel that in life there is a 
vast ocean of knowledge and power, of which a single 
self can only dimly dream, can never fully conceive, and 
certainly never possess. And the consciousness of his 
own worthlessness in view of all this will go far to rob 
Caius of his hoped-for satisfaction in himself; even if 
nothing else opposes his desires. Contentment with self 
is only possible when one is unconscious of how much 
life there is outside him. Let him know of myriads of 
other selves, each desiring development like his own; 
each possessed of some experience that is not his; each 
the possessor of peculiar excellences; each the victor in 
its own great battles: I say, let one appreciate this, and 
a high opinion of his own insignificant fragment of the 
universe 1s impossible. 

We have gone over somewhat hastily the field of the 
supposed individual goods. Our model Catus has been 
left to follow his own devices, has been observed and 
criticized. I have not pretended to say what Catus him- 
self will hold of his life. Perhaps he will think it worth 
living. There is no telling the extent of a man’s illusions. 
I have only argued from the point of view of an external 
observer that the life of Caius is not at all worth living. 
We who reflect and suppose ourselves in full possession 
of the facts, must decide, I claim, that all Caius’ aims 


150). THE PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE, 


have failed, and that viewed with reference to himself 
only, it had been better for him had he not been born. 

The argument about Catus, you see, is not an argu- 
ment that he is wretched in the sense of knowing his 
wretchedness. I only claim that Caius, or any other 
man who lives for himself, could he but once be en- 
lightened, could he but once view his life all through at 
a glance, could he but see the shadowy nature of all his 
pleasures and the illusiveness of all his goals, would be 
overcome with the conviction of the worthlessness of the 
whole business of living. He would then need no philo- 
sophic judge. He would declare himself wretched with- 
out further question. 

But let us look at the consequences. Caius was the 
best conceivable case. He was the ideal man, living for 
himself. What is the real state of things among men? 
Are all such beings as Caius? Quite the contrary. A 
mob of individuals, hurled together as it were at random 
out of the infinite storehouse of the possible, every va- 
riety of disposition, every grade of weakness, of inca- 
pacity, of disease, of ignorance: such is Humanity. 
Every one, to speak in the rough, among the teeming 
mass of creatures comes into the world with a desperate 
desire to make it subservient to his ends. By hard treat- 
ment, by toil and bruises, and bloodshed and tears, he 
learns by and by that there are some things he cannot 
accomplish, some barriers he cannot break down, some 
enemies he cannot subdue, some aims that can never be 
realized. In his narrow circle he learns to live, if the 
task be not all too hard for him; and then discontented, 
groaning, hoping for better times, complaining of mythi- 
cal lost happiness, cursing his lot and any of his fellows 
he may think more fortunate than himself, he wears the 
gloomy days away until the last sigh escapes him and 


OF PESSIMISM 161 


men put him out of sight and forget him. An exaggerated 
picture you say; but remember that this is the actual 
prosaic, dead-level experience of untold millions. You 
need not go a mile from where we are now sitting to find 
in the streets scores of such individuals as I have de- 
scribed. This is the average lot of humanity. We who 
are better off are so because these are worse off. Their 
reluctant labor gives us leisure to be happier than they. 
And this swarm of living beings is not content with its 
present sum of misery. No, it must go on breeding at 
the wildest random, through every possible combina- 
tion of the discordant dispositions found among its num- 
bers, breeding offspring to increase and to perpetuate 
the sum of brute passion, of ignorance, of disease, of 
suffering. Here is the great rule. Exceptions are all the 
cases of prosperous people, of happy homes, of knowl- 
edge, of power, of contentment. And these exceptions, 
what are they but as the individual we have just been 
considering, as Caius. The best life, viewed with respect 
to the self that lives, is a failure, is worthless. What then 
is the worst life, or even, if-you will, the average life? 

Thus far I have laid no stress on pain; that great fact 
of life — Pain may not be eliminated as pleasure was by 
not reflecting upon it. Pleasure lulls reflection to sleep. 
Pain quickens it. Hard it is for the subject to say with 
full consciousness, now I am happy, now I enjoy. Hap- 
piness flies by unheeded, and time joyfully passed seems 
short. 

But pain forces reflection. Easy it 1s to continue suf- 
fering and yet to reflect, to be impelled to reflect, I it 
is who suffer, | am the one in agony. Now pain is a fact 
of the widest importance. Everywhere you find it. Yet 
beyond a certain point pain is a foe to all that makes life 
worth living. Moral endeavor of the highest sort will 


162 THE PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE 


fall powerless before it when it 1s long continued and dis- 
tracting. Leaving all else out of account this one great 
fact of suftering would be enough to make us doubt the 
worth of life. Contemplate a battle field the first night 
after the struggle, contemplate here a vast company the 
equal of the population of a great town, writhing in 
agony, their groans sounding at a great distance like the 
roar of the ocean, their pain uneased for many hours, 
even death, so lavish of his favors all day, now refusing 
to comfort; contemplate this and then remember that as 
this pain to the agony of the world, so is an electric 
spark drawn from the back of a kitten to the devastating 
lightning of many great storms; and now estimate if you 
can the worth of all but a few exceptional human lives, 
such as that of Caius. | 

Briefly and imperfectly I state the case for pessimism, 
not even touching the economical and social argument, 
drawn from a more special consideration of the condi- 
tions of human life. Such then, is our individual human 
life. What shall we call it and whereunto shall it be 
likened? A vapor vanishing in the sun? No, that is not 
insignificant enough. A wave, broken on the beach? 
No, that is not unhappy enough. A soap bubble burst- 
ing into thin air? No, even that has rainbow hues. 
What then? Nothing but itself. Call it human life. 
You could not find a comparison more thoroughly con- 
demning it. 

But the practical significance? This I can briefly state. 
The practical significance 1s not that men should go and 
hang themselves. Just the opposite. He is a poor judge 
of the merits of the case who counsels this. The indict- 
ment has been, mark me well, against human life re- 
garded as individual life. This is evil. But you note 
that I have had nothing to say about other facts of life; 


OF PESSIMISM 153 


about the worth of love, of sacrifice, of the worship of the 
beautiful, of the purely intellectual delights, of the de- 
votion to ideal ends. These things I have not touched 
upon. And why? These things belong not to individual 
life. Sum them all up, in their practical aspect in one 
term, Holy Living. And then of this I shall say that 
Holy Living is living not for Self, but for the quelling, 
the putting down of Self, and for the building up of 
peaceful, harmonious, but entirely unselfish life. The 
object of such a life is found in its own perfection. The 
pessimistic argument does not touch it, because such a 
life is not one of restless striving or of fleeting desires, 
but of calm, of resignation, of broad earnestness. It is 
affirmed then that in so far as one lives in unselfish love 
of others, in sacrifice for the sake of the higher prosperity 
of the world, in sacrifice if you will for the sake of true 
sacrifice, in contemplation, in the delights of thought 
for thoughts sake, in a word, in the Ideal, that in so far 
as one thus lives, he lives not as an individual, but as a 
mere representative of the higher life. Such a higher life 
is beyond the pessimist’s criticism. Such a life we 
should seek. 

Thus then, the moral of Pessimism can be easily 
stated: First, Pessimism leads us to the settled convic- 
tion that all life for Self is worthless. The development 
of Self is opposed by every obstacle. The best possible 
result would be simply zero. Expect then, nothing from 
Self or for Self. Labor to cast self aside, and to live in 
the universal life, having only this one object, that the 
best and highest should be attained, no matter who at- 
tains it. 

Secondly, Pessimism is opposed to all half-way 
schemes for reforming the world. Do not make men 
unhappy by telling them that were they a little more 


154 SIGNIFICANCE OF PESSIMISM 


wealthy or politically a little freer, they would be happy. 
Tell them that they can find happiness only when they 
cease to seek it for themselves. Talk no more of golden 
ages. Talk of golden deeds. 

If this be best told men through a particular creed, let 
it be so told. But let not the creed talk of future happi- 
ness for individuals in another world. This is but to 
substitute a ghost for a shadow. Let the creed be hard 
and bitter. The individual soul will resist it, but once 
conquered, will be the better for it. To know how poor 
are our own lives, is to know how lovely is the Higher 


and Holier Life beyond Self. 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 
[ 1881 | 


HE problem of the worth of life is often regarded 

among men of the world as one that the healthy 

have no wish to discuss, and the unhealthy no 
right to decide. But surely reflective beings must sooner 
or later be led to consider the worth of conscious life; for 
self-criticism is an essential part of all mental growth, 
and cannot rest until it has taken into consideration the 
whole, as well as the parts, of our activity. But as every 
new step in critical thought is made by means of a nega- 
tive criticism of old positions, the question of the worth 
of life must distinctly appear for the first time in the 
form of what is inexactly called pessimistic doubt about 
human life. The doctrine popularly named pessimism, 
the doctrine that evil is on the whole triumphant, is con- 
sequently the immediate subject of the following discus- 
sion, whose ultimate aim is the suggestion of some 
thoughts on the method of estimating the worth of 
human life. Our plan will be to give, first, a study of 
certain modern views that bear on our problem; sec- 
ondly, a critical examination of the bases of these views. 
We shall preface a very brief account of what is meant 
by a worth-estimate of human life. 

No one familiar with the spirit and objects of modern 
discussion will find it improper that we should confine 
ourselves throughout to the study of human life as we 
know it in this world. Our life this side death is, at all 
events, the one subject of present moral interest. We 
are accustomed to bound our desires, even when they 
extend beyond the limits of our own lives, by the limits 
of the probable future life of our race. The future means, 


156 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


to the modern man, future generations. Our position 1s 
that of Faust, and from that position alone can we 
clearly reason and definitely hope: 


Aus dieser Erde quillen meine Freuden 
Und diese Sonne scheinet meinen Leiden. 
Kann ich mich erst von ithnen scheiden 
Dann mag was will und kann, geschehn. 


I. WortTH-EsTIMATES IN GENERAL 


Pleasure and pain being familiar facts of conscious- 
ness, there arises a frequent desire quantitatively to 
compare different pleasures and pains. Whether this 
color is as pleasing as that one, this Christmas as merry 
as the last one, this novel as delightful as another, 
whether seasickness is more disagreeable than a tooth- 
ache of equal persistence, whether a broken arm is a 
greater pain than a wounded conscience, such questions 
as these are often discussed among men. The only 
means of deciding them directly is by an appeal to inner 
personal experience. Discussion, by arousing sympathy, 
jealousy, or obstinacy, or by appealing to the desire for 
the approval of others, often alters the natural judg- 
ment in such matters. But natural or artificial, the 
ultimate judgment is based on inner experience. The 
difficulty, however, in imparting and understanding 
these elementary worth-judgments lies in the fact that 
the objects compared are not always clearly defined. It 
may be regarded as axiomatic that the result of a direct 
comparison of two present facts of experience is decisive 
of their relative value as pleasures or pains. If, at the 
same time, two colors are before me, or if, in immediate 
succession, I hear two different sounds, or smell two dif- 
ferent flowers, my decision as to which is just now the 
better of the two compared experiences, is a decision 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 157 


beyond appeal. But most of our worth-judgments are 
not founded on direct comparison of facts of present ex- 
perience. Two Christmases are separated by at least 
one year. Toothache and seasickness need not unite at 
the same time for the torture of the man that compares 
them. And so through a long list of cases. A worth- 
judgment is thus often founded on the comparison of a 
present with a remembered experience, or of two or more 
remembered experiences with one another. Here the 
direct judgment is as such indeed above appeal. If the 
experience A appears to me in memory as superior to B, 
then so it appears. But one may still doubt whether A 
if present would seem preferable to a present experience 
of B. The actually made judgment does not and cannot 
decide upon this latter point. Of the relative worth as 
pleasures or pains of A and B in themselves we cannot 
judge, since A and B are experiences (¢. g., Christmases, 
toothaches, sea voyages, novels) separated by a con- 
siderable interval of time. Our judgment of their rela- 
tive worth concerns them merely as they appear in 
memory. 

We have some means of determining the nature of the 
illusions to which memory is subject,! but these means 
are insufficient for the purpose of eliminating the dis- 
turbing element introduced into our worth-judgments 
by the lapse of time. Our best effort in this direction is 
usually made when we have asked ourselves to decide 
quite deliberately what we should probably do in the 
way of choice, were the experiences in question now to 
present themselves for our decision. We substitute de- 
liberate weighing of the remembered for living choice 
of the present experiences, and our decision is in the 


1 See Mr. James Sully’s late book, [/usions: A Psychological 
Study; in particular ch. x, on “Illusions of Memory.” 


158 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


end a choice between two conceived actions, 7.¢., a 
volition. 

Completely hopeless is any attainment of direct judg- 
ment when we have to consider the total worth of a long 
series of experiences, such as are contained in a year or in 
an epoch of our lives. The sum of any number of suc- 
cessive impressions of pleasure and pain is never given 
in consciousness. Experience knows of no true summa- 
tion of experiences. The sum of a series of enjoyments, 
or of sufferings, is a purely ideal thing, invented by sub- 
sequent reflection. You can sum up two heaps of bullets 
by putting them together and counting them. Facts of 
consciousness are not bullets to be kept, heaped up and 
counted. They die as soon as they are born. You might 
as well seek to sum up the successive tongues of flame in 
your fireplace as to find the sum of the ever-moving, up- 
springing, and dying contents of restless human con- 
scious life. What we mean by the sum of a series of 
pleasurable and painful experiences is commonly simply 
the total impression of them that remains in memory 
when we overlook the past. When one says that it was 
“worth while” to take a certain journey, to read a par- 
ticular dull book, to learn a certain foreign language; 
when one poet says that it is better to have loved and 
lost than never to have loved at all, or when another 
poet tells each of us to count over the joys of his life, and 
then to “know, whatever thou hast been, ’tis something 
better not to be’’; in all such cases we have to do with 
no real summation, but with an estimate based on the 
qualitative difference between the present total impres- 
sions of two represented sets of experiences. Not even 
such a rough summation is there here as is made in case 
of a hasty estimate of the size or weight of a present ma- 
terial mass. For the parts of the material mass coexist, 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 159 


and the total impression is made without any consider- 
able lapse of time during the survey of the parts. But 
the worth-estimate is concerned with non-coexistent 
objects, separated by large periods of time. The one 
estimate is capable of verification; the other is beyond 
verification. The estimate of the actual size of a material 
object is the goal of inquiry. The most careful estimate 
of the mathematical sum of a long series of pleasures 
and pains would really be of no importance whatever 
if it chanced to disagree with a worth-estimate based 
upon a mere feeling or total impression of the accept- 
ability or non-acceptability of the series of impressions 
as a whole. Prove to me that during a certain moun- 
tain walk I had in sum more pain than pleasure, and 
you will not prove to me that my walk was a failure. 
I may still have the total impression of the acceptability 
of the whole experience, an impression resulting from 
the fact that I have nearly forgotten the vexations of the 
walk, and have retained a vivid memory of the views and 
of the mountain air. This total impression you shall in 
vain seek to overcome with your estimate. I should not 
care for your sum if you were to make it with the exacti- 
tude of a recording angel. My mere feeling of the worth 
of mountain-climbing decides the whole matter. 

Thus, then, our estimate of the worth of any large 
fragment of human life is founded, not so much on an 
estimate of the mathematical sum of its separate experi- 
ences, as on a total impression of the worth or signifi- 
cance of the entire series, when viewed from some other 
moment of time. The knowledge that this total im- 
pression is the basis of all judgment of life, is at the 
bottom of the hec olim meminisse juvabit of the man in 
present misfortune. Hope says that even if our un- 
happy experiences exceed in number and intensity our 


160 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


happy experiences, still the future will arbitrarily turn 
the scale by regarding the whole series of experiences as 
essentially good. And so no man, unprejudiced by a sys- 
tem, tries to apply a strictly utilitarian test to the judg- 
ment of the worth of his own experience. The utilitarian 
test would require a strict summation and balancing of 
pleasures and pains. Such summation is in fact never 
possible. If it were possible, the balance sheet of joy 
and misery would be for most men of no use what- 
evel 

Worth-judgments concerning human life, as a whole, 
are, therefore, not reducible to assertions about the 
mathematical sum of pleasures and pains. What, then, 
determines these judgments? Our historical study is 1n- 
tended to answer in part this very question. So much is, 
however, clear: that a worth-judgment about human life 
is the result of an act of mind, somewhat resembling an 


1 This problem of the “‘Hedonistic calculus,” is discussed by 
Mr. Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 1st ed., bk. II, ch. iii, sec. 2, 
p. 120, sqq. The fundamental importance of the whole ques- 
tion seems to be hardly appreciated by most utilitarians. To 
tell us to seek for the “greatest possible sum of happiness,” 
when the balance of pleasures and pains can neither be made, 
nor, if made, accepted by most unprejudiced men, as ex- 
pressing their sense of the worth of their own experience: this 
is simply to tell us to behead the Cheshire cat that has no body. 
The connection of the subject with the present question ap- 
pears very well in v. Hartmann’s essay, “‘Ist der Pessimismus 
wissenschaftlich zu begriinden?”’ (Philosoph. Monatsh., bd. XV, 
hft. X, p. 589, sqq.), where the author coolly assumes (p. 591), 
“that objection to this Hedonistic estimate of the worth of 
life . . . does not affect the truth of pessimism, which has for 
the first to do only with the proof of the fact that the balance 
of pleasure in the world gives a negative result.” In other 
words, “Off with the cat’s head,” whether or not it has any 
body. 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 161 


ordinary practical volition. This life is good, this life is 
evil, these opposing judgments are two opposing atti- 
tudes of will. The ultimate decision in the matter is not 
to result from a mathematical estimate, but from moral 
insight. The nature of this insight does not yet appear. 
But we must be clear as to what we are seeking, viz., not 
a balance sheet of evil and good, but a watch word to 
determine our principles of action; an everlasting yea or 
nay, that shall relate to the whole of life. 


II. Pessimism AND MopERN POETRY 


Ethical “criticism of life,” to borrow Mr. Matthew 
Arnold’s phrase, takes in this century many forms. 
Chief among them are poetry and speculative philoso- 
phy. The poetry of the nineteenth century has been 
largely the result of the movement in mental life for 
which is chiefly responsible the revolution, political and 
social, at the close of the eighteenth century. The revo- 
lution meant for the poets the suggestion of a splendid 
or terrible future for the human race, and the present 
realization of a fullness of emotional life unknown to the 
earlier decades of the century. Here was material 
enough for magnificent dreams and for stirring life- 
pictures. The schools of poetry that expressed the spirit 
of the age were, however, weighted with something that 
proved fatal to very many promising talents; and this 
something was the tendency to reflection. To have an 
emotion is one thing, to sing it a very different thing; 
but to sing it even while you are speculating about its 
philosophic significance is the saddest of all the tasks 1m- 
posed by the envious gods. Yet such is the task to which 
are condemned more than half of our best modern poets. 
They can not have the pure emotion; or, if they can 
have it, they can not sing it purely and simply. The de- 


162 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


mon of reflection is continually whispering in the singer’s 
ear: What is all this good for? Whence comes it? What 
has it to do with the inmost nature of things? What 
bearing has it on the conduct of life? The singer, unless 
he is a chosen one of all, stammers and blunders; or, re- 
covering himself, takes refuge in grand metrical digres- 
sions of a semi-metaphysical nature. In fact, because 
the revolution itself expressed tendencies largely specu- 
lative, and because thought-problems were never before 
so widely known or discussed as they are in this century, 
the poet in mirroring his own age is forced to seek such 
union of thought with emotion as was never before de- 
manded of the verse maker. 

Emotion tinged with speculative reflection results in 
the writing of what is called romantic poetry. High or 
low, grand or inane, nearly all sincere modern poetic 
effort is in this sense romantic. A sort of secondary, arti- 
ficial freedom from reflection we find in a tew classic 
modern poems; a few natural songs from time to time 
spring up unaffected by the reflective spirit. But on the 
whole, for good or for evil, romanticism is triumphant: 
for good, when the thought and the emotion unite to 
form a perfect whole, a colored but still unblurred crys- 
tal, a Prometheus Unbound or a first part of Faust; for 
evil, whenever the thought mars the purity of the feel- 
ing, the feeling the definiteness of the thought.! 

Of all the subjects of reflection in the romantic poetry, 
none is more familiar than the question of the meaning 
and worth of human life as a whole. The first and natu- 
ral answer of the modern poet to this question is well 
known. Human life means for him the emotional side 
of life. The highest good, when found, must be an emo- 


1 The rest of Sec. II was incorporated in ch. v of The Re- 
ligious Aspect of Philosophy. — Ed. 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 163 


tional good. The romantic poet, criticizing life, must 
aim to make clear what kind of emotional condition is 
the most satisfactory one. Notice that in this view we 
have no mere truism. Many forms of Hedonism would 
oppose the doctrine that in the intenser emotions can be 
found the ideal states of consciousness. The common 
sense of men of the world sees in the more moderate 
pleasures of polite leisure, in the attainment of practical 
knowledge, in a successful professional or business ca- 
reer, the sources of permanent satisfaction. Several 
schools of ancient philosophy regarded tranquillity as 
constituting the essence of a blessed life. But to all this 
the spirit of modern poetry was from the outset vio- 
lently opposed. Tranquillity, once exchanged for storm 
and stress, is not again regarded as the goal. Active 
emotion, intense in quality, unlimited in quantity, is 
what the poets of the revolution desire. One need only 
mention Werther, The Robbers, The Revolt of Islam, 
Manfred, Faust, to suggest what is meant by this spirit 
of the revolutionary poetry. 

Life, then, can be of worth only in so far as it is full of 
the desirable forms of poetic emotion. But is such full- 
ness of life possible? Is the view that makes it the ideal 
a tenable view? Must not the consistent following of 
this view lead ultimately to pessimism? The answer to 
this problem is the history of the whole romantic move- 
ment. Here must suffice a sketch of some of the princi- 
pal results of the movement. 

The stir of modern life, then, has awakened sensibil- 
ity, quickened desire, aroused the passion for freedom, 
disturbed old traditions. Above all, the theological 
ideals of life have been for the romantic poet disturbed, 
perhaps shattered. His highest good must be sought in 
his own soul. What is the consequence? First, of course, 


164 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


a sense of splendid independence, a lofty spiritual pride. 
The joy of freed emotion is equaled by few delights on 
earth. The self-worship of poetic genius is surpassed by 
few forms of conceit. Shelley, rejoicing in his strength, 
writing The Necessity of Atheism, and defending, in all 
innocence of evil, adultery and incest, is a good example 
of the expression of this spirit. Lavatar’s account of the 
nature of genius is another instance: “As the appari- 
tions of angels do not come but are present, do not go 
away but are gone, as they strike the innermost marrow, 
influence by their immortality the immortal in men, 
vanish and yet still influence, leave behind them sweet 
shuddering and tears of terror, and on the countenance 
pale joy, so the operation of genius. Describe genius as 
you will — name it fruitfulness of soul, faith, hope, love 
— the unlearned, the unlearnable — the inimitable, the 
divine — that is genius. ’Tis inspiration, revelation, 
that may be felt, but not willed or desired; ’tis art above 
art, its way is the way of the lightning.” ! I cannot 
quote a tenth part of this rhapsody, wherein the self- 
admiration and the mutual admiration of the young 
men about Goethe, in the years just before and after 
1780, receive a characteristic expression. 

This pride leads directly to the effort to build up a 
wholly new set of ideals. The patience of the statesman, 
of the student of science, of the business man, is un- 
known to these forceful young men. They must make a 
world of their own, and ina day, too. At the same time 
they are without any definite faith. In fact, definite 
faith would endanger for them the freshness of their 
emotions. They tear any creed but one self-made. And 
they can more easily tear down than build up. One of 

1 See the passage at much greater length in Koberstein’s 


Gesch. d. deutch. Nationalitit, bd. IV, p. 26 of the 5th ed. 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 165 


the most interesting of the young geniuses of that age ! 
is the early lost Novalis (Friedrich v. Hardenberg), a 
representative, like Shelley after him, of the emotional 
or romantic poetry in its pristine innocence. A truly 
noble soul, joined to a weak body, oppressed by many 
troubles, unable to grow to full manly spiritual stature, 
he shows us the beauty and imperfection of the emo- 
tional movement in close union. He writes pages of 
vague philosophy, which afterwards impressed the 
young Carlyle as an expression of a sense of the deep 
mystery of life. You find delight in wandering through 
the flowery labyrinths of such speculation; but you 
come nowhere. Only this is clear: the young poet per- 
sists that the world must in some way conform to the 
emotional needs of man. And he persists, too, that a 
harmonious scheme of life can be formed on a purely 
romantic plan, and only on such a plan. He actually ex- 
plains no reality and completes no scheme of life. He 
hints, at length, that the Catholic church is the best 
expression of the needs of man. With this unsatisfac- 
tory suggestion, the little career of wandering ends in 
death. But in what could it have ended, had life con- 
tinued? 

Perhaps in what was called by the close friend of 
Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel, the romantic irony. This ts 
the next stage in the growth, or, if you like, in the decay 
of the romantic spirit. Emotion is our guide and our 
goal. But what is emotion? Something changeable and 
by nature inconsistent. Each emotion sets up a claim to 
fill the whole of life. For each new one, the earnest 
poetic soul teels willing to die. Yet each is driven away 


1 The age in question extends from 1770 to 1830. No spe- 
cial effort is here made to follow chronological order. Our pur- 
pose is to cite illustrations, not to give a history. 


166 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


by its follower. The feet of them that shall bear it out 
are before the door even while the triumphant emotion is 
reigning over the heart within. Fullness of such life 
means fickleness. Novalis, upon the death of his be- 
trothed, made a sort of divinity of the departed, and 
dated a new era from the day of her death. His Diary 
was for a while full of spiritual exercises, suggested by 
his affliction. He resolved to follow her to the grave in 
one year. Within this year he was betrothed anew. If 
such is Novalis, what will be a lesser spirit? Conscious 
of this inevitable decay of each emotion, Friedrich 
Schlegel suggests that one should make a virtue of neces- 
sity and declare that the higher life consists in a sort of 
enthusiastic fickleness. The genius must wander like a 
humming bird in the garden of divine emotions. And he 
must be conscious and proud of his wanderings. Ac- 
tivity, or rather agility, is his highest perfection. The 
more numerous his emotions, the nobler the man. The 
fickler the man, the more numerous his emotions. This 
conscious union of nobility and fickleness is the romantic 
irony, which consists in receiving each new enthusiasm 
with a merry pride. "Iwas not the first, and will not be 
the last. We see through it, even while we submit to it. 
We are more than it, and will survive it. Long live King 
Experience, who showers upon us new feelings! 

So much for an ingenious and thoroughly detestable 
view of life, in which there is for an earnest man no rest. 
This irony, what is it but the laughter of demons over 
the miserable weakness of human character? The emo- 
tion was to be our god. It turns out to be a wretched 
fetich, and we know it as such. Iwas mine, ’tis his, and 
has been slave to thousands. It is gone, though we 
trusted in it. It was our stay, and it has flowed away 
like water. This is not fullness, but hollowness, of life. 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 167 


And how shall the romantic irony supply the vacancy? 
This irony is but the word of Mephistopheles about the 
ruin of Gretchen: Sie ist die erste nicht. Not the first 
change of emotion is this present one; not the first break- 
ing up of the fountains of the great deep within us; but 
what misery in that thought! Then there is nothing 
sure, nothing significant. In our own hearts were we to 
find life, and there is no true life there; only masks with 
nothing beneath them; only endless and meaningless 
change. 

The consciousness of this result is the next step in the 
self-criticism of the romantic spirit. The consequence is 
what Hegel in the Phaénomenologie des Geistes, described 
under the name of Das Ungliickliche Bewusstsein, and 
what is more familiarly known to us as the Byronic 
frame of mind. The very strength of the previous emo- 
tion renders this consciousness of the hollowness of emo- 
tion the more insupportable: 


When the lamp is broken 
The light in the dust lies dead. 


The brighter the lamp, the deeper the darkness that fol- 
lows its breaking. 

The romantic despair thus described took many forms 
in the poetry of the early part of the century. To de- 
scribe them all were to go far beyond our limits. A few 
forms suggest themselves. If we are condemned to 
fleeting emotions, we are still not deprived of the hope 
that some day we may by chance find an abiding emo- 
tion. Thus, then, we find many poets living in a wholly 
problematic state of mind, expecting the god stronger 
than they who, coming, shall rule over them. Such a man 
is the dramatist and writer of tales, Heinrich von Kleist. 
“Tt can be,” writes this poet to a friend, December, 


168 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


1806,! “it can be no evil spirit that rules the world, only 
a spirit not understood.” In such a tone of restless 
search for the ideal of action, Kleist remains throughout 
his life. No poet of the romantic school had a keener 
love of life problems purely as problems. Each of his 
works is the statement of a question. Kleist answered 
his own questions at last by suicide. Others have other 
ways of fleeing misery. Ludwig Tieck, after running 
through the whole round of romantic questions, rids 
himself of his demons by turning his attention to other 
literary work, and lets most of the old romantic ideals 
alone. Friedrich Schlegel finally escapes from himself by 
means of scholarly toil and Catholic faith. Hdélderlin 
takes refuge in a mad-house. Shelley manages to endure, 
while he lives, by dint of childlike submissiveness to his 
emotions, joined with earnest hope for yet better things. 
Schiller joins with Goethe in a search for perfection in 
the ancient Greek world. There are many fashions of 
quieting the restlessness that belonged to the time, yet 
what one of them really answers the problems of the 
romantic spirit? There is still the great question: How 
may mankind live the harmonious emotional life, when 
men are driven for their ideals back upon themselves, 
when traditional faith is removed, when the age is full 
of wretchedness and of blind striving, when the very 
strength of poetic emotion implies that it is transient 
and changeable? The conscious failure to answer this 
question is more or less decided pessimism. 

Could modern poetry free itself from that reflective 
tendency in which we have found its most prominent 
characteristic, the pessimism could disappear with the 
criticism of life. But this is impossible. Omit part of 


1 T quote from J. Schmidt, Gesch. d. deutchen Literatur, bd. 
Lpi472: 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT | 169 


our lyric poetry, some of our comedy and of our satire, 
and the rest of our best nineteenth-century poetic work 
is a more or less conscious struggle with pessimism. The 
grounds and the nature of this struggle have been set 
forth in the foregoing. The poet once for all accepts the 
emotional criterion of the worth of life. Determining to 
see in the harmonious emotional life the best life, feeling 
as the most certain of principles that “there is a lower 
and a higher,” the poet seeks to picture the perfect ex- 
istence thus defined. Failure means for him pessimism; 
not v. Hartmann’s really quite harmless “eudémono- 
logischer Pessimismus,” but the true pessimism of the 
broken will, that has tried all and failed. The life that 
ought to be, cannot be; the life that is, is hollow and 
futile; such will be the result of disappointed idealism. 
In our time, the idealistic poets that are not pessimists 
have all, nevertheless, fought more or less consciously 
the same battle with pessimism. Think only of the Ex- 
cursion, or of the In Memoriam, or again of Faust, that 
epitome of the thought of our century. 

But before we allow ourselves a word on the relation 
of Faust to our problem, let us look a little closer at By- 
ron. Faust is the crown of modern poetic effort. If that 
fails as a solution, all in this field has thus far been lost. 
But in Byron there is a confessed, one might even say a 
professed, moral imperfection, whose nature throws 
light, not so much on the solution of the problem of pes- 
simism, as on the problem itself. 

The development of Bryon’s poetry has two very 
marked periods, the sentimental and the critical. The 
sentimental Byron of the years before 1816 is not of very 
great historical interest. The Byron of Manfred, Cain, 
and Don Yuan, represents an independent phase of the 
romantic movement, whose faults are as instructive as 


170 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


its beauties. This period of Byron’s poetry is of course 
but very roughly described by the word critical, yet 
that word is at any rate suggestive. A sensitive man, 
and yet heroic, strong in spirit, but without fixed ideals 
of life, a rebel by nature who yet finds no greater soul 
to lead him, no faithful band to follow him in any defi- 
nite effort for mankind, Byron is a modern likeness of 
him that in the legend afterwards became St. Christo- 
pher. Only Byron seeks the strongest without finding 
him, learns to despise the devil, and never meets the 
devil’s master. Worn out with the search, the poet 
flings himself down in the woods of doubt and dreams 
Don Fuan. We look in vain for the right adjective with 
which to qualify this poem: it is so full of strength, so 
lavish of splendid resources, and yet in sum so disap- 
pointing. It has no true ending, and never could have 
had one. It is a mountain stream, plunging down 
dreadful chasms, singing through grand forests, and los- 
ing itself in a lifeless gray alkali desert. Here is romantic 
self-criticism pushed to its farthest consequences. Here 
is the self-confession of an heroic soul that has made too 
high demands on life, and that has found in its own ex- 
perience and in the world nothing worthy of true hero- 
ism. We feel the magnitude of the blunder, we despise 
(with the author, as must be noticed, not in opposition 
to him) the miserable petty round of detestable experi- 
ences — intrigues, amours, dinners — in brief, the vul- 
garity to which human life is reduced; but the tragedy 
is everywhere to be read between the lines, not in what 
is said. The romantic spirit has sought in vain for the 
satisfactory emotional state, and for the worthy deed to 
perform, and now rests, scornful and yet terrified, in 
dizzy contemplation of the confused and meaningless 
maze of sensations into which the world has resolved 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 171 


itself. “There is nothing there to fear or hope,’’ this 
spirit seems to say. 


“When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, 
And proved it, ’twas no matter what he said.” 


Or again: 


“To be or not to be?” Ere I decide 
I should be glad to know that which 1s being; 
"Tis true we speculate both far and wide, 
And deem, because we see, we are all-seeing. 
For my part, I’ll enlist on neither side, 
Until I see both sides for once agreeing. 
For me, I sometimes think that life is death, 
Rather than life a mere affair of breath. 


In Manfred the same spirit seeks another, and not 
quite so successful a form of expression. The only peace 
that can come to this world-weary spirit, Manfred ex- 
presses at the sight of a quiet sunset. The only freedom 
from eternal self-examination is found in an occasional 
glance at peaceful nature. 


It will not last, 
But it is well to have known it though but once} 
It hath enlarged my thoughts with a new sense, 
And I within my tablets would note down 
That there is such a feeling. 


The famous last words of Manfred, 


Old man, ’tis not so difficult to die. 


coming as they do after all Manfred’s vacillation upon 
just this point, indicate the final resolution of despair to 
brave all possible wretchedness from without for the sake 
of feeling within, in all its strength, though but for a 
moment, the fierce defiance of the rebellious Titan. 
Hungry for deeds, finding nothing to do, fearing the 
possible future life, and hating the present, the hero at 


172 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


last resorts to an untrue but stirring assertion of abso- 
lute personal independence of all the hateful universe 
here and hereafter: 

Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt me. 

I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey — 

But was my own destroyer, and will be 

My own hereafter. 

This is pessimism that overleaps itself and falls on the 
other. The outcome of self-analyzing romanticism 1s the 
determination to build afresh a world that shall be 
nobler than this poor world of decaying passive emo- 
tions. Feeling will not do. Manfred attains something 
by action, even though he first acts in the moment of 
death. Doing work of some kind is, then, that to which 
we are necessarily driven. But if the action of defiance 
can make death tolerable, why might not some kind of 
activity make life tolerable? Is not the worthy life then 
to be found, not in emotion, but in work? Is not the 
ideal state the ideal activity, not the ideal feeling? This 
suggestion is at the foundation of the prototype of Man- 
fred, the Faust of Goethe. 

Praise of the first part of Goethe’s Faust is nowadays 
superfluous. Doubtless the work 1s a torso,’ but so is the 
life of man. Extravagant encomium of Faust, such as 
that wherewith Hermann Grimm has marred, as with a 
showman’s harangue, the conclusion of his otherwise 
most instructive Lectures on Goethe, seems as out of place 
as applause in a cathedral. The poem 1s grand and 
profound, because the life problems it so truthfully por- 
trays are grand and profound; in form, if you except 
digressions, it is sublimely simple and unassuming. Its 

1 Cf. the opinion of M. Edm. Scherer as quoted in Mr. 


Matthew Arnold’s essay, “A French Critic on Goethe,” in the 
Mixed Essays, p. 291. 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 173 


imperfections are as open to view as is its grandeur. The 
doctrine of the poem may be thus briefly suggested. 
Here is a world wherein nature, the expression of divine 
intelligence, is perfect, wherein man, by the same divine 
wisdom, is left in darkness and confusion. The angels, 
who simply contemplate nature’s perfection, are the 
“true sons of God.” But they do nothing. They only 
see and think. Man istoact. By his action he is freely 
to create such perfection as already passively exists in 
nature. That is, his life is to become an harmonious 
whole. The postulate of the Lord is that this is possible. 
Mephistopheles holds the opposite opinion. The ques- 
tion is to be solved by the case of Faust. 

Faust is a man in whom are combined all the strength 
and weakness of the romantic spirit. No excellence he 
deems of worth so long as any excellence is beyond his 
grasp. Therefore his despair at the sight of the great 
world of life. So small a part of it is his. He knows that 
he can never grow great enough to grasp the whole, or 
any finite part of the whole. Yet there remains the hope- 
less desire for this wholeness. Nothing but the infinite 
can be satisfying. Hence the despair of the early scenes 
of the first part. Like Byron’s Manfred, Faust seeks 
death; but Faust is kept from it by no fear of worse 
things beyond, only by an accidental reawakening of 
old childish emotions. He feels that he has no business 
with life, and is wholly a creature of accident. He is 
clearly conscious only of a longing for a full experience. 
But this experience he conceives as mainly a passive one. 
He does not wish as yet to do anything, only to get 
everything.’ But at the same time with this desire for a 

1 Cf. the lengthy discussion of this point in Friedrich 
Vischer, Goethe's Faust, Neue Beitrige zur Kritik des Gedichis, 
especially p. 291, and p. 304. “Er (Faust) weiss also fiir jetzt 
nur von der Lust.” 


174 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


tempest of new feelings, Faust has the consciousness 
that there never can be a satisfactory feeling. Mephis- 
topheles, stating the case of the contented man of the 
world, assures him that the time will come for enjoying 
good things in peace. Faust indignantly replies that 
pleasure can never deceive him, the tolerable moment 
never come. In making this very assertion, however, 
and in concluding his pact with Mephistopheles upon 
the basis of this assertion, Faust rises above his first 
position, and assumes a new one. The satisfactory pleas- 
ure can never be given to him, and why? Because he 
will always remain active. Satisfaction would mean re- 
pose, repose would mean death. Life is activity. The 
meaning of the pact is of course that, for good or for 
evil, all the existence of a man is work, and that no one 
is ever wholly lost so long as the power of accomplish- 
ment remains his. But if work is the essence of life, then 
satisfaction must be found not in feelings but in deeds. 
The world is good if we can make it so, not otherwise. 
The problem of Faust is, therefore, the discovery of the 
perfect kind of activity. 

With this insight the romantic spirit has risen beyond 
itself. The essence of romanticism is the desire for full- 
ness of personal experience. The essence of this new 
spirit 1s the eagerness to accomplish something. The 
difference is vast. Faust, following this new tendency, 
might be led to an obscure toiling life of endless self- 
sacrifice. His pessimism (for in the early scenes he is a 
pessimist) might give way before unquestioning heroic 
devotion to some great end. Does this take place? We 
know too well the answer. The whole poem is indeed a 
conflict between the two tendencies of Faust, but the 
first, the desire for manifold passive experiences, is until 
the last scenes of the second part predominant. Faust 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 175 


is active, but his activity is mainly a continual pursuit 
of new experiences. Even at the end he is not active as 
other men are active; his work is done by magic; and the 
accomplishment for whose sake he is at last willing to 
say, This 1s the highest moment, 1s an anticipation, not a 
reality. In the real world the satisfactory work is never 
found. And thus the solution of the problem is not fully 
given, though the poet, while suggesting it, has done 
more than any other modern poet. The revolution had 
furnished as life-ideals grand emotion and heroic action. 
The two cannot wholly be harmonized. The highest 
forms of activity imply self-sacrifice, drudgery, routine, 
cool-headed calculation, realism. The highest forms of 
emotion, pursued by themselves, intoxicate and ener- 
vate. It is the purpose of Goethe to lead his hero through 
the various stages of emotional life for the sake of mak- 
ing him prefer in the end a mode of action to all forms of 
simple emotion. The result is to be a man above the 
deadness of ordinary work-a-day realism, yet as devoted 
to toil as the stupidest realist. There is to be a free sur- 
render of a full self to the service of some high end. 
Nothing 1s lacking to the conquest over pessimism, ex- 
cept the clear statement of that for which the converted 
Faust is to work. The goal of activity once found, the 
problem will be solved, and the devil’s wager lost. But 
the dim allegorical suggestions of the second part will 
not suffice to give us the account of what is wanted. 
Faust is to work for human progress, and progress means 
the existence of a whole nation of hard-laboring, fearless 
men who fight forever for their freedom. To have been 
the father of such a people is the highest blessedness. 
Good, indeed, we say; but to have wrought by the devil’s 
aid, through magic and oppression, is this the highest? 
Is this the type of the best activity? And is the great 


176 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


problem after all really solved? For what is the ultimate 
good of the eternal warfare with nature in which man- 
kind are thus left? Faust leaves behind him a nation of 
toilers, whose business it will be to build dikes to keep 
the sea out. A worthy end of romantic hopes, truly! 
That Goethe himself is not wholly content therewith, is 
proven by the epilogue in heaven, which means, if it 
means anything, that the highest end of human activity 
is something very fine, but altogether inexpressible, in- 
visible, inconceivable, indefinite, a thing of ether and 
fog. One longs in this last scene for the presence of 
Mephistopheles, who surely has as much right there as 
in the prologue, and who would be sure to say, in his 
terse and sinewy fashion, just the right and the last 
word about the whole business. 

The incompleteness of Faust is the incompleteness of 
modern thought. The poet is silent about the final prob- 
lem, because modern thought is still toiling away on the 
definition of the highest human activity. And so we 
naturally turn from our hasty survey of the poetic move- 
ment of the revolutionary period to a sketch of certain 
forms of speculative thought regarding this problem of 
pessimism. 


III. Pessimism AND SPECULATION 


At the outset of our discussion, we rejected the view 
that estimates the value of life as an accountant esti- 
mates a man’s assets, viz., by summation and balancing. 
The only useful speculations on the worth of life are 
those that regard life with reference to some accepted 
goal; itself a state of consciousness in some animate be- 
ing. Given the goal, we can compare therewith the 
work actually done in human life, and see how nearly 
the desired state has been approached. The desired 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 177 


state may imply a series of experiences, in which, upon 
summation, there is found to be an excess of pain over 
pleasure. Yet this state may be demanded as the highest 
state, and the implied series of experiences may be ac- 
cepted as a means thereto, without any question on the 
part of the acceptor as to the balance of pleasure and 
pain. The worth of life is judged solely with reference to 
the goal. 

What determines the choice of our goal need not here 
be considered at length. It is enough to note the follow- 
ing principles: 1. If we choose any end as the end to be 
sought, our work towards that end 1s accompanied by an 
unrest, 7. e., by a constant disposition to alter the con- 
tent of our consciousness, so long as we are at work. The 
attainment of the goal means the cessation of the un- 
rest. To seek the goal and to seek to quiet the unrest 
are, therefore, one and the same thing. 2. Unrest has no 
absolute worth. For otherwise, unrest itself would be 
our goal. But unrest is not the goal; it is the conscious- 
ness that we are seeking our goal. The goal has worth in 
itself; but the unrest has worth only as bringing us near 
the goal. 3. If we have fixed upon any goal, so that we 
judge life as good in so far as it approaches, bad in so far 
as it does not approach, the goal, then our estimate of 
the worth of life is by implication fixed, and can be al- 
tered only by an alteration of the goal. But the choice of 
the goal is an act of volition. We cannot prove to an- 
other person that so and so is the goal. We can tell him 
what our goal is, and can hope that we shall find or 
awaken in him a sympathy with our enthusiasm. The 
choice of an object in life defies logical demonstration. 
Men catch from other men moral ideals, or now and 
again originate new ones for themselves. Never do they 
receive their moral principles as they do their mathe- 


178 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


matics, by rigid demonstration. The ultimate axioms of 
conduct are practical volitions; while the ultimate ax- 
ioms of science, if volitional in nature, are yet volitions 
of another order. 4. But, in accepting several goals at 
once, or in altering a previously accepted goal, we are, to 
a certain extent, influenced by a logical consideration, 
viz., consistency. If two accepted goals of action are 
found to conflict, we seek to harmonize them by com- 
promise, or by the elimination of one of them. If one 
goal is found, upon analysis, to imply a self-contradic- 
tion, we alter it. If, upon better understanding of what 
an accepted goal implies, we alter our position towards 
it, our reflection has influenced our volition. Thus, there 
arises a sort of moral dialectic, and the independence of 
our will, in accepting a particular object as the goal of 
our striving, is limited by the reaction of our thought 
upon each new ideal that we set up. 

These principles being admitted, the discussion of the 
worth of life reduces to the following questions: 1. Are 
the goals of ordinary human action such as can be clearly 
defined at all? 2. If defined, will they be found to be 
consistent, or inconsistent and mutually destructive? 
3. If this is the case, can any process of dialectic purifi- 
cation reduce them to unity, and set up a consistent and 
universal ideal of life? 4. If this last ideal is found, is it 
to be regarded as attainable? 

The first question is generally answered with a quali- 
fied, sometimes with an unqualified, affirmative. That 
at least some of the popular objects of human life are 
definable, is implied in nearly every discussion of the 
subject, whatever the result of such discussion. In so 
far as such goals of action are not definable, the life that 
seeks them has, from our point of view, no definable 
worth. 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 179 


Given an affirmative answer to the first question, the 
second presents itself in two forms. It may relate to the 
objects of the life of some one individual, as given to and 
for him. Or it may relate to the various ideals of vari- 
ous people, considered in their social relations. In both 
its forms we must answer the question in the same way. 
The various ordinarily accepted aims of human life, both 
in individuals for themselves and in society at large, do 
conflict. Vacillation, inner struggles of all kinds, show 
us how disunited are our own individual ideals of life; 
aggression and cruelty, even discussion, even the forms 
of compact and alliance, show how great the conflict, or 
the danger of conflict, between various human aims. 
But if life as a whole is to have worth, these conflicts, it 
would seem, must, on the whole, be brought to an end. 
For they mean hindrance and extra unrest even to the 
victors; total failure, endless unrest, to the vanquished. 

The third and fourth questions are the places of the 
greatest controversy. If one may be permitted to affirm 
anything about people’s answers to questions that they 
themselves did not in so many words formulate, one may 
with fair certainty say that on his negative answer to 
our third question depends, in part, Schopenhauer’s pe- 
culiar form of pessimism, while on the afirmative answer 
thereto depends the optimism of the most of the Hegel- 
ian school, as well as the optimism of the evolution phi- 
losophers. For the Hegelian, all conflicting human ends 
finally, through a dialectic process, harmonize in one 
highest end, the self-consciousness of the Absolute 
Spirit. For the believer in physical evolution, all human 
ends will at length harmonize in the one end of giving 
self, through the perfect satisfaction of our fellows, the 
greatest satisfaction possible. Such at least is the sense 
of a late formula propounded by a thoroughly competent 


180 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


authority. But for Schopenhauer such harmony is im- 
possible. The greater our knowledge, the better shall we 
see, according to Schopenhauer, that warfare is of the 
essence of the will, and that the various objects of the 
will, not only are incompatible, but must forever remain 
irreconcilable. 

But if the third question were answered in the affrma- 
tive, if the one goal were fixed upon, the fourth question 
would remain. This fourth question, viewed apart from 
the third, is answered negatively by Schopenhauer, af- 
firmatively by the evolution philosophers, presumably 
with a weder noch by most of the Hegelians. Let us look 
for a moment at the matter. Given any goal, then life 
is of worth in so far as it approaches that goal. Endless 
unrest would be failure. But now, says Schopenhauer, 
life is will, and will is unrest. Given any goal as the 
highest, then attainment would mean absolute rest. Ab- 
solute rest would mean cessation of will, and so death. 
But if attainment of the absolute end means death, then 
in life the end cannot be attained. Life can, therefore, 
never have absolute worth. Whatever is a goal with 
nothing beyond cannot be life, but must be death. What- 
ever life has no final goal within its reach, must be an 
eternal failure. On such a basis is Schopenhauer’s pessi- 
mism built up. 

Let us consider the subject in another way, making 
ourselves more independent of Schopenhauer’s meta- 
physic, and taking a course that leads to a direct attack 
upon that stronghold of modern optimism, viz., upon 
the ethical significance of the doctrine of progress. Some 
people at one time liked the phrase “perfectibility of 
man,” instead of the more modern phrase “evolution of 
humanity.” But when men looked to history for proof 
of this “perfectibility,” one trouble in their way was the 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 181 


sad fact that the perfectible creature has never yet been 
perfected. If not quite “so wunderlich als wie am ersten 
Tag,” he 1s still not a little defective; in fact, mostly a 
blunderer, and often a knave. “The progress of man” 
seems, then, a more satisfactory term wherewith to sum 
up the facts of history. But too many optimistic con- 
gratulations must not yet be exchanged over this fact of 
progress. It is a fact; progress is for the better, and wor- 
ship of savage innocence was a mere sentimental whim 
of the strait-laced eighteenth century. But what follows 
thence about the nature of life? Alas! too little. This 
worship of progress is only another bit of sentiment, use- 
ful in its place, but of not very tough moral fiber. Stout- 
hearted men in this great, dark universe, must be ready 
to take their own view of the worth of life, quite apart 
from their knowledge of a link or two of the myriad- 
coiled chain of the world history. For reflect: this bit of 
life that we here know, is but a fragment (a cross-section 
as it were, with a little piece added lengthwise) out of an 
eternity of events. Here is an endless sequence of causes 
and effects. Now, on any hypothesis as to the powers 
that direct the universe, so much is certain. After an in- 
finity of time (of progress or of retrogression, or of end- 
less circular motion? Who shall say?), the world spirit 
or the world force has brought forth this present world 
of human life, with all its vast imperfections. The world 
plan or no-plan (we need not here discuss which) in- 
volves as a possible result, after the lapse of infinite ages 
of change, all the failure and worthlessness and blind 
struggling that is here about us in these oppressed mil- 
lions of wasted lives, in these thieves and cut-throats, in 
these filthy, in these halt and blind, in these stupid 
wretches that make up the lower classes of society, in 
these heart-sick, lonesome wanderers that seek the out- 


182 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


skirts of civilization, in all these fellow-beings to whom 
our hearts go out in pity even while we despise their 
weakness. This is one result of the infinite ages. Take 
the worst wretch ever heard of — a Guiteau or a Judas. 
It took just an eternity to produce him. Now, this being 
so, it is enough. What the world plan is we need not 
judge. What it may imply, we by this example see. It 
may imply always just, as it now realizes, the existence 
of what we in this discussion are regarding as evil, 
namely, hopeless striving ending in failure, fierce con- 
flict ending in mutual destruction of the fighters. Here 
helps no progress. This world may get better for a while; 
what are a few million years in an eternity? But there is 
no evidence to show that progress 1s eternal and regular. 
If progress had gone on from eternity, where would be 
room for imperfection now? Much as many efforts in 
theodicy become inconsistent with orthodox theology in 
that they necessarily imply that the evil of this world, 
being an essential of finite and rational existence, must 
continue into the next world and enter heaven itself, 
even so this optimism of progress proves too much. If 
evil is possible and actual after infinite ages of progress, 
then a further infinity of progress might never remove 
the evil. And why, then, is progress a very cheering 
fact? But if the infinite past has not been all progress, 
then what hope for the future? The most probable 
view of the universe as a whole would seem then to be 
the view, according to which growth and decay go on 
forever in cyclic rhythm. At any time in the past or 
future we should expect to find much such a universe of 
striving and imperfection as we now find, the forms in- 
finitely various, the significance wearily the same. 

So much for the skeptical consideration of our fourth 
question. To return now for a few final words about our 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 183 


third question. In the present writer’s mind there is no 
doubt that the third question can be answered affirma- 
tively; that there is an ultimate goal, to which, by simple 
self-knowledge, by immanent criticism of human desire, 
all the various and conflicting goals of action can be re- 
duced. Whether all men will ever come to recognize this 
one goal, whether by any process of dialectic purifica- 
tion the many will for all men be stripped of their de- 
ceits and seen in their reality as but one, we do not know. 
That makes little difference for the purposes of our third 
question. Nor can we go far now into the defense of 
this as our goal. We must content ourselves with a mere 
statement. The one goal is the rendering as full and as 
definite as possible all the conscious life that at any 
moment comes within the circle of our influence. Devo- 
tion, then, to universal conscious life, is the goal of 
conscious life itself; or the goal is the self-reference or 
self-surrender of each conscious moment to the great 
whole of life, in so far as that whole is within reach. 
Separation from other conscious life means failure. Con- 
scious union with other conscious life means for every 
conscious being success in proportion to the fullness, 
clearness, and definiteness of that union. This union is 
the highest goal, not for itself logically demonstrable as 
such, but deducible from the other actual goals of man- 
kind when they are analyzed in their true meaning. 
This being the goal of action, the fourth question re- 
curs. Is the goal attainable? The trust in progress is, as 
we just saw, no secure support. Progress seems to be a 
fact of very limited scope, magnified rather unduly in 
our eyes by a certain praiseworthy enthusiasm of con- 
temporary thought. No hope then there. Critical 
thinkers can not be permanently caught with such chaff. 
Optimists or pessimists we must be here and now, in and 


184 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


for this present earthly life in this nineteenth century. 
Everybody then must finally settle the question with his 
own soul. Discussions like the present but try to state 
the problem, that each may have its terms before him. 
And what is the problem as our discussion has defined it? 
Here is our final statement: 

If the goal is conscious union of every conscious being 
with the great whole of conscious life, and if rest is im- 
possible until that end is attained, and possible if that 
is attained, can we hope under human conditions to 
attain this goal? The answer is: in perfect union and 
harmony with the whole of conscious life we can at 
moments feel ourselves. Self-sacrifice chief of all, and in 
the next rank hard work for any impersonal end, or the 
mere contemplation of active life, the union with others 
for the doing of work that involves no warring with an 
opposite party, even warfare when carried on ‘for the 
good of the whole of conscious life; whatever, in a word, 
impresses on each his own insignificance and still more 
the grandeur of the great ocean of conscious activity be- 
low, about, and above him: all such deeds and experi- 
ences serve to accomplish what is meant by union of 
each being with the whole of life. Yet such union is 
perfected only in moments. For the rest of the time 
selfishness, self-conceit, struggle with hated equals, in a 
word, unrest, are predominant. And of mankind as a 
whole, this is even more true than of those individual 
men who have a fancy for ethics. We must look for- 
ward then for ourselves to a life-long—for the universe 
to a seemingly eternal — process of unrest, broken by 
transient moments of union with the whole of conscious 
life, by moments, that is, of devotion, of cheerful ab- 
sorption in noble work, of strength in the admiration of 
other strength; by moments of sympathy and of self- 


PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 185 


sacrifice. Whether in sum there shall be more pains 
than pleasures in this series of conscious states, who 
knows? And who need care? Are we registering ma- 
chines or men? We are viewing life solely with reference 
to the highest goal. What matters the rest of it? 

This being our result, is it optimistic or pessimistic? 
Surely not what most people mean by the former. A 
life of endless battle, with temporary triumphs here and 
there, is no complete triumph. But is it complete fail- 
ure? The goal never is finally attained, but is repeatedly 
attained, though but temporarily. The result is not the 
despair of disappointed romanticism, for we passed be- 
yond that when we found that without activity no real 
triumph 1s possible. Nor is it that confused representa- 
tion of an indefinite something with which the epilogue 
in heaven in Faust torments us. This sense of oneness 
with universal consciousness is a very simple experience: 
you can know it easily if you will but do a sacrificing act 
with purely unselfish motives, or if you will but give 
yourself up to the enthusiasm of a great popular cause, 
or if you will sit down and comfort a fellow-being in dis- 
tress. Much nonsense can be talked about the matter; 
but, after all, the soul of true living is such experience. 
This life 1s my life: 1t is a rich moment when we say that 
of some other being, and were it but of a chirping, nest- 
brooding bird in the woods at twilight. Nor is our result 
a mere acceptance of activity as in itself enough. No, 
the activity is unrest; but through the unrest comes oc- 
casional rest. As for Schopenhauer’s objection that the 
unrest predominates, we admit the fact. Schopen- 
hauer’s inference is that the will to live ought to be 
quenched. We reply that this is a matter not thus to 
be decided. As we first chose our goal by independent 
volition, so now we may choose how much hindrance of 


186 PESSIMISM AND MODERN THOUGHT 


our endless efforts to reach the goal will be regarded as 
compensated by our occasional successes. Not the com- 
parison of the two sums is desired, but the verdict of 
volition upon the worth of two sets of experiences. 
Which will you choose? That last question is simply un- 
answerable, except by a direct act of will. Here are the 
facts: A goal, viz.,self-forgetfulness in the contemplation 
and creation of the fullest and clearest universal con- 
scious life; a struggle to reach this goal, a struggle with 
blind nature, with selfishness within, with hatred with- 
out; this struggle alternating with periods of triumph; 
the process of alternating struggle and occasional tri- 
umph an endless process. How like you this life? It is 
the best that you are apt to find. Do you accept it? 
Every man has to deal with these queries quite by him- 
self, even as with his own eyes he must see colors. It is 
our province merely to suggest the ultimate questions. 

It has been the aim of the foregoing essay to present 
the question of pessimism in various historical lights, 
and to suggest a method of dealing with the problems 
involved. That these problems are deeply rooted in 
human nature seems plain. Unfortunate is the public 
apathy and light-headedness which declines to consider 
serious moral questions until accident forces them upon 
our notice. Pessimism is often regarded with horror; yet 
an earnest pessimist would be better than a sluggard of 
any creed. 


TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
[ 1880 ] 


THICAL phenomena, like all other phenomena 
H wherewith human thought deals, may be studied 

in either one of two ways, viz., by an historical 
examination of their genesis, or by an analysis of their 
structure as they now exist. Either way of studying 
phenomena is made easier by the practice and insight 
gained through pursuing the other, yet the ways are 
essentially distinct. To know the origin of things is not 
the same as to know their nature. In this paper I shall 
first undertake to compare in general the results gained 
by the two methods as applied to testing the distinction 
between right and wrong, and shall then discuss this dis- 
tinction as it is seen from the point of view of the analy- 
tical method. 

The historical method of philosophizing, understood 
in the most general sense, is the method especially pur- 
sued by those who support the doctrine of evolution. 
The analytic method is the one that was long in favor in 
philosophy, though nowadays it is often unfairly neg- 
lected. By the historical method of philosophy, to be 
sure, I do not mean to include all the ways of working of 
those writers whose study is history. Many historians 
are above all devoted to the analysis of social structures, 
and take interest in questions of genesis only in so far as 
these throw light on the constitution of things. But on 
the whole writers on social science make most prominent 
one or other of two postulates. The postulate of the his- 
torical school is: The forms of things are determined by 
the growth of things. The postulate of the analytical 
school is: The history of the world is nothing but the 


188 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


series of various possible groupings of the permanent 
elements of the world. It is plain upon reflection that 
neither of the two schools can ever conquer the other. 
There is no direct conflict. Both ways of thinking are 
necessary and well founded. The historical method 
bases itself, like the science of experimental physics, on 
the general confidence in the uniformity of nature. The 
analytical method, with its postulate, has the same ulti- 
mate foundation as the science of mathematics. The 
one method says, certain laws of change are fixed. The 
other method says, certain elementary statical relations 
endure forever. Both must be admitted, as far as they 
go, to be possible ways of unifying human experience. 
Both lead to such truth as mortals can reach, viz., to 
clearness, to simplicity, to harmony, to unity, in our 
conceptions. But the two methods show us the uni- 
verse in different lights. The historical or Herakleitean 
method studies things as in flow, the analytic or Eleatic 
method studies the same things as at rest. And any 
effort on the part of one method to exclude or refute the 
legitimate proceedings of the other must lead to one- 
sidedness and mistakes. 

But to speak now especially of ethics. The historical 
method if carried to its farthest extent and if successful, 
would give us a complete account of how the moral 
ideas of men grew up. Taking as known the condition 
of a mind actuated by simple and unmoral motives, 
such as the desire to avoid an immediate pain and to 
gain immediate pleasure, the historian would show us 
how, as the conditions of the environment grew more 
complex, the consciousness of men must grow more com- 
plex also, and how somewhere in the growth there must 
appear those sentiments which we call moral. That 
these sentiments are qualitatively different from those 


TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 189 


out of which they grew, would interest the historian but 
little. That they grew out of the assumed previous state 
would be his thesis; and he would show that they must 
grow out of this previous state, by finding the uniform 
laws according to which they actually have grown. For 
the historical philosopher, “‘must follow’’ means “does 
follow in all cases where given conditions are present.” 
Whether analysis would show the subsequent state to 
have been contained in the previous state as an element 
or part of it, or whether the resultant is of an entirely 
new kind, wholly unlike the antecedent, is for the his- 
torical philosopher a very subordinate question. Uni- 
formity in sequence does not mean that a thing follows 
from something that was like it, but that a given simple 
sequence of two things, like or unlike, will take place 
whenever certain conditions are present. 

The analytical moralist, on the other hand, is espe- 
cially interested in the moral consciousness as it is. The 
facts of history mean for him not evidences of genesis, 
but experiments whose use is to show the component 
parts of the moral consciousness by bringing moral 
agents into very various relative situations. The study 
of ethics is for him the distinction, description and criti- 
cism of the different ethical tendencies in human char- 
acter, as they exist in themselves and in combination. 
Therefore, how the moral consciousness grew is for him 
a problem not of the highest importance. 

We cannot say that the one of these methods which is 
followed by an ethical philosopher determines his 
conclusions as to the true test of right and wrong. Utili- 
tarians for example have sometimes been analytic stu- 
dents of Ethics, as Bentham was, or again, have often 
been students of the genesis of moral ideas. In like man- 
ner those whose ethical doctrine is founded on the no- 


190 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


tion of a divine origin of right and wrong are no less 
students of genesis, than is Mr. Spencer himself in his 
Data of Ethics. But if the method does not determine 
one’s view of the moral principle, it certainly modifies 
greatly one’s treatment of particular moral doctrines. 
One-sided pursuit of either method blinds us to the 
facts on which the other is based. Moreover, if the an- 
alytic student forgets that analysis is only a part of the 
truth, he is apt, through neglecting to study the evolu- 
tion of moral ideas, to fail in his analysis itself. And, on 
the other hand, if analysis is neglected for the sake of 
studying the evolution of morality, one is led to super- 
ficial generalizations, and in the presence of many im- 
portant problems is left helpless. 

To exemplify first the fault of the one-sided use of the 
analytic method: it is plain that if one determines to 
base his system of ethics solely on an analysis of his own 
moral consciousness as it now is, he will probably fail 
for lack of a sufficient variety of illustration. His analy- 
sis will be unsystematic, crude, not clearly intelligible to 
other people. His code will be provincial in the narrow- 
est sense. Or if liberal, his liberalism will not be based 
on an intelligent appreciation of the diversity of human 
life, but on pure accident. Another man whose system 
was formed in like fashion will fail to find ground for 
agreement with the first. Their mutual intolerance will 
be a mutual refutation. Their best remedy will be an 
appeal to history to come to the aid of analysis. Let 
them view the history of humanity as the expression in 
time of the various possible forms of human character, 
as furnishing therefore a sort of self-dissection of the 
world spirit. Let their ethical doctrine be based on the 
results of this natural analysis of conscious life. Thus 
may the essential and the accidental in morality be sepa- 


TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG IgI 


rated from each other, and the analysis be given an en- 
during character. To be sure, each man’s self-analysis 
must be the foundation of all his philosophy. Nothing 
can be more certain than what we really observe in our- 
selves. But for suggestions as to what we should seek 
in ourselves, this process of historical analysis is invalu- 
able. 

On the other hand, look at the problems introduced 
and left unsolved by the one-sided following of the his- 
torical method. Suppose that we trace one’s acknowl- 
edgment of duties towards one’s fellowmen to the 
growth of the social impulse. We may succeed in giving 
a very good psychological account of the genesis of 
moral ideas. But one great purpose of ethical discus- 
sion will be left unaccomplished. No sufficient test will 
be furnished for distinguishing right from wrong in 
many cases of conflict between duty and selfishness, or 
between one and another duty. Not merely in its prac- 
tical or hortatory aspect, but in its theoretical investiga- 
tions ethical science will thus be incomplete. Take a 
particular instance. By the historical method of ethics, 
stealing is shown to be a vice, by pointing out that civil- 
ized society could not exist if men had to distrust one 
another’s honesty altogether or in great measure. It 
can be shown that through the experience of the conse- 
quences of theft, there has gradually grown up the in- 
stinct to disapprove of theft and to avoid committing it. 
As a rule, the truly civilized man does not steal. So 
much history can show us. All this makes honesty ap- 
pear as an end of society, a demand on the part of what 
the late Professor Clifford called the “Tribal Self.” Yet 
this study of evolution does not get rid of the fact that 
what makes the call of morality as morality binding on 
each one of us, is his own inclination to be moral. Take 


Ig2 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


away my sense of morality and my wish to do right, and 
you may frighten me into legality, but you will not 
make me virtuous. Now suppose for a time that I espe- 
cially desire to steal. Suppose moreover, that I see 
clearly that civilized society could not exist if men had 
to distrust one another’s honesty. Suppose, however, 
that I am just now quite indifferent to that fact. My 
theft will not be discovered, I shall not be punished; and 
my act, though belonging to a class of acts which if 
numerous enough would ruin society, will in point of 
fact leave society where it was before. Now my knowl- 
edge of evolution has taught me the true end and use of 
morality, namely, the existence and good of society. It 
has not taught me that this social end must always and 
everywhere be my only end. On the contrary, it leads 
me to believe that the social end tends to be realized 
notwithstanding all resistance. At all events, though I 
hope society will grow better, in fact, I feel that my one 
undiscovered insignificant wrongdoing will not injure 
society at all, but only the one person from whom I steal. 
He will get no redress, and may never even know what 
hurt him. Society will not be attacked at all. As for the 
evil that bad example does to society, there is no bad ex- 
ample in this case, because by hypothesis nobody knows 
of the act. If everybody did such acts, there would, in- 
deed, be no society; but everybody does not do such 
secret acts, and there is no danger that many will ever 
be done. Why must I refrain from an act simply be- 
cause its universal performance would endanger society? 
If everybody chopped wood or played with sand con- 
tinually, there would be no society either. People actu- 
ally do chop wood when the action is profitable, and 
play with sand when they have nothing else todo. Even 
so, if people only stole when they could do so absolutely 


TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 193 


without suspicion and at a time when their neighbors 
were generally honest, stealing would endanger society 
as little as other rather uncommon acts such as chopping 
wood and playing with sand. Historically then, there is 
no moral fact discoverable that makes my theft bad for 
me unless I just now happen to regard it as bad. My 
end is just now not the universal social end, it is a selfish 
end. Enlightened selfishness leads me indeed to see in 
society something of the highest importance for me. 
Enlightened selfishness does not lead me to refrain from 
harming my neighbor in a case where revenge or counter 
injury is impossible, and where my act cannot be inter- 
preted as a direct attack on society, nor as an example 
to others. In brief, the result of the historical account of 
morality is such that from it alone I can draw no reason 
for condemning any wrong act that is done in secret, 
that is beyond discovery, that is uncommon, and that is 
therefore directed against the individual and not against 
society. If my analysis of my own purposes does not 
show me the right, the history of social purposes will 
not in this case help me at all. 

The difficulty which all of us feel in accepting this ar- 
gument as valid arises simply from the fact that none of 
us are content with a purely historical account of the 
moral consciousness, but that we appeal to analysis of 
the moral consciousness as it is whenever a case of doubt 
arises. Plainly stated, however, the fact is, that the now 
favorite historical account of morality does exhibit the 
moral consciousness as, according to its origin, merely 
enlightened and exalted selfishness. Now this history of 
the evolution of morality is no doubt, correct as history. 
But as a fact the moral consciousness now existing turns 
out, upon analysis, to be something qualitatively differ- 
ent from enlightened selfishness. Enlightened selfish- 


194 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


ness leads me to serve society because society is valuable 
to me, or even to work for posterity if I take pleasure in 
thinking of posterity. But enlightened selfishness can- 
not teach me to do or to avoid any act that does not 
affect society as a whole, and that does not bring me 
reward or save me punishment, unless the doing or 
omission of this act suits my inclination. My moral 
consciousness does demand that I should do right and 
eschew wrong, even though I am not inclined to do so, 
and even though directly or indirectly the most en- 
lightened selfishness cannot teach me that the least ad- 
vantage will come to me from a particular right act, nor 
the least harm result to me from a particular wrong act. 
How and with what reason and consistency conscience 
makes such great demands upon us, only analysis can 
show us. History is powerless before the fact that what- 
ever the moral consciousness of men has sprung from it 
is more than enlightened selfishness. Analysis must 
come to our aid, and show us what then this “more”’ 
really is. Historically I judge of acts as more or less 
“evolved.”’ An act on a lower stage of evolution is 
attended with less knowledge of consequences, with less 
thought of tendencies. On a higher stage a man looks 
further into the future and regards the indirect as well as 
the direct results of his acts. That is all. If an act of 
cruelty or of injustice is contemplated and desired, I 
cannot see that the man who refrains from the desired 
act because it seems wrong to him, can be proved by the 
historical method to be any better than the man who 
with like impulse, regarding the act and all its conse- 
quences, and finding that in the particular case the act 
because of its secrecy will never hurt society at large, 
and seeing, too, no chance that he will suffer himself be- 
cause of it, resolves to do it. Both men had the evil 


TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 195 


desire alike. In one it was checked by a vague feeling. 
In the other it was deliberately carried out after consid- 
eration of all the consequences. If we are to take the 
civilized moral consciousness as it is and analyze it, per- 
haps we shall find out why one man does what is called 
right, and the other what is called wrong. If we merely 
question the doctrine of evolution, it can at best tell us 
that in some future time such acts will cease with the 
evil desires. Meanwhile, the problem remains so long 
as the desires do. 

The difficulty in question becomes a very practical 
one if we remember that many harsh words are spoken, 
many unjust criticisms passed, much back-biting and 
coldness and sneering permitted in this world, just be- 
cause enlightened selfishness can show no harm to the 
evil doer or to the structure of society resulting from 
such acts. Not often is stealing made attractive by the 
rare circumstance that we have a good chance and run 
no risk; but we often speak ill of a man or laugh at him 
in case we know he cannot harm us in return. For that 
circumstance often occurs. Society is not revolution- 
ized by our deeds, nor perhaps, would it be bettered if 
we refrained from them. Only the poor fellow we mal- 
treat is the worse for it, and we personally with our de- 
light in our own powers of speech are greatly amused 
and even benefited. Perhaps a future society will elimi- 
nate all this; but meanwhile it is a question whether in 
our present state evil tongues are not useful to keep 
every man at his post, and whether our own sneers and 
harsh words are not a valuable practice for the battle of 
life. What baseness is thus cloaked and justified! 

In fine, then, the historical doctrine of morality is of 
very great value as history, but it leaves certain im- 
portant problems unsolved. It assumes what the his- 


196 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


tory of evolution can never prove, that acts should be 
avoided in case their consequences would be bad were 
such acts universally done. This postulate of the Kan- 
tian Ethics could never have been discovered by the 
theory of evolution. An observer from another planet, 
himself without conscience, but endowed with all in- 
sight, would surely condemn no act or desire of mine un- 
less he saw its consequences to be ultimately bad for me. 
An act that tended in the long run to injure self he would 
call foolish. If I wished to hurt my fellows, and if no 
harm came to me ffom cautiously gratifying my wish in 
certain ways, he would praise me as a skillful and clever 
being, a fine product of evolution, even as I now praise 
for her skill and do not condemn for her cruelty a cat 
that lies in wait for little birds. Even as a social being I 
would seem to him praiseworthy if I could use social 
forms to injure other people without harming myself 
and without in any way weakening the stability of these 
forms. He would see indeed that such acts to be suc- 
cessful must be either insignificant or rare. So much the 
more would he praise me for knowing and respecting the 
boundary that I cannot pass without defeating myself. 
Such an observer from another planet is the historian of 
the moral evolution of humanity, in case he refuses to 
study the inner meaning of actions, and to analyze the 
consciousness of man in its own present structure. The 
worth of general morality he can prove. The binding 
force of all individual obligations he cannot demonstrate. 
The rules of the social philosopher admit of important 
exceptions. The moral law knows indeed doubtful, but 
never truly exceptional cases. 

We now turn to the analysis of the moral conscious- 
ness, an analysis not carried on in an intolerant or ex- 
clusive spirit, but as an aid and complement to the 


TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 197 


theory of the evolution of morality. Let us state its 
problem, and do what we can towards indicating the 
way in which it may be solved. 


THE Prospiem or ETHICAL ANALYSIS 


Problem. Given a world of moral agents, required to de- 
Jine most generally their mutual relations as moral agents, 
and the kind of work morally devolving upon each. By 
moral agent I mean a being not hindered by external in- 
terference, acting solely according to the laws of his own 
nature, and possessed of the sense that distinguishes be- 
tween right and wrong. This sense is well known. What 
the term denotes is perfectly clear. If any one pretends 
to doubt let us show him plain instances of the distinc- 
tion between right and wrong. If he is a moral agent at 
all, he will exercise his moral sense in apprehending the 
instances. It is right to do a man a kindness where you 
expect no return. It is wrong to roast a man alive on a 
gridiron. It is right, if you own a ship and are free to use 
it, to send it out to rescue a shipwrecked crew from a 
desert island. It is wrong to explode dynamite under 
the dwelling of a peaceable citizen merely to show him 
how much you dislike him. It is right, if you are en- 
tirely master of your time and fortune and life, to go 
into a pestilence stricken city to nurse the sick. It is 
wrong to put obstructions on a track to wreck a railway 
train. It is right to speak kindly to a crying child that 
you meet in the street. It is wrong to beat a dog for the 
sake of hearing him howl. These are simple instances of 
moral distinctions. Everybody competent to speak upon 
moral questions will make them. Clifford in his two 
remarkable ethical tractates (published in the posthu- 
mous “Lectures and Essays’’) was surely right in as- 
suming such distinctions as the starting point of ethics, 


198 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


and in regarding them as matters of simple conscious- 
ness for all moral agents, like colors and tastes for all 
beings with normal eyes and tongues. The denotation, 
I repeat, of the words “moral sense,” “moral conscious- 
ness,” “moral distinctions,” etc., is perfectly plain. It is 
their connotation that is in question, and this we must 
determine by analysis. Clifford’s ethical essays seem to 
me disappointing in that after their luminous beginning 
they go on to a one-sided use of the historical method. 
The acceptance of the distinctions as data seems to me 
to imply the need of analyzing them as they are in con- 
sciousness. If we would be thorough-going in our analy- 
sis of the moral consciousness, we must undertake a 
brief analysis of consciousness in general. The distinc- 
tion between right and wrong must be based, nearly or 
remotely, on the ultimate facts of mental life. Yet our 
analysis of consciousness need not pretend to be ex- 
haustive. We can limit it in one direction forthwith. To 
distinguish right from wrong is to perform an act of 
knowledge, to make a conscious judgment. Therefore, 
in analyzing mental life we may for the present purpose, 
restrict our attention to those phenomena of conscious- 
ness which are grouped under the general name knowl- 
edge. That right and wrong differ is something known. 
How do we know anything whatever? How does knowl- 
edge come to us and appear in our minds? Let us at- 
tempt a brief answer. If it carries us away from ethical 
inquiry for a moment, we shall return the better quali- 
fied to understand the tests of right and wrong. For the 
nature of knowledge in general determines the particu- 
lar nature of ethical knowledge. 


TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 199 


THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE IN GENERAL 


To know clearly is to judge the agreement or the dis- 
agreement of two or more things, the qualities or the 
existence of something, or the relations in coexistence or 
in succession of different things. Clear knowledge ap- 
pears as judgment with subject and predicate conceived 
but not necessarily expressed. The clearer the knowl- 
edge, the more plainly the act of apprehension takes the 
form of a judgment. But in the act of judging about 
things, three elements or constituents of knowledge are 
involved. At least one of these is present in all knowl- 
edge, and the others may be present. Let us look at 
these constituents more closely. 

1. Whenever we know, our act of knowledge is possi- 
ble only in so far as something is given to us as a fact of 
momentary experience. This fact or datum suggests the 
judgment and gives the material for it. When I judge 
“This paper is white,” “This book is mine,” “‘ Washing- 
ton was the father of his country,” “A triangle is a plane 
figure having three sides”’; in every such case there is, 
when I judge, something given in my consciousness, 
something that I passively receive, and cannot at the 
time alter. The perception that I call by the name 
“paper” or “book,” may be an illusory perception. Yet 
at the moment it is given, and I cannot resist the force 
that puts it into my consciousness. Perhaps Washing- 
ton never existed, and history is a myth; but quite cer- 
tainly my present idea of Washington and his character 
is a datum, which I accept as a simple fact, whether 
there is a corresponding reality or not. It required once 
no little mental activity for me to understand what was 
meant by the word triangle. Now my ideas of tri- 
angle and three-sidedness seem perfectly familiar, and 


200 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


whether they be good or bad are given as they are at the 
moment of my judgment about them. In short, the 
content of feeling or perception or idea in the present 
moment is absolutely forced upon me. No scepticism 
can make me doubt it, and no resistance make it seem 
for the moment other than a fact. Without data no 
knowledge. Whenever there is knowledge there are 
simple data of consciousness. 

2. But now when I judge: “Washington was the 
father of his country”’; “tobacco is a narcotic”’; “space 
has three dimensions,” and the like, I do more than ac- 
cept a given datum of consciousness. I assert that this 
datum stands for more than itself, that not only it is, 
but also something else not now given is represented by 
it. This persuasion is the persuasion that a present 
judgment has some sort of “‘objective validity.”’ Now 
reflection will show that the datum itself as datum can- 
not carry with it a certificate of objective validity. Not 
only may such judgments as those cited sometimes 
prove to be illusory, but it is sure that all of them go be- 
yond their data. A fact of consciousness is given, a color, 
a pain, an idea of Washington, a concept of space. 
Nothing but a pure fact of consciousness. Whatever 
validity is ascribed to a judgment beyond the sphere of 
the moment in which it is made is not certified by the 
data of consciousness themselves as data, but is a prod- 
uct of some mental activity, working on the data, and 
evolving from them what is not in them. Every judg- 
ment of objective validity is ampliative, 7. e., it predi- 
cates more than the data alone can justify. Thus I have 
an idea of Washington. This is a datum. By my own 
activity I project this idea, as it were, into a past time, 
and ascribe to it validity for that time. I say, “this idea 
of Washington stands for a past fact in the experience of 


TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 201 


the race. Washington really existed.’ Without the pro- 
jecting activity of mind, without the disposition to see 
in data more than they contain in themselves as data, 
reason, belief, what men call truth, and action, principle, 
effort, virtue, in a word, spiritual life, would be impos- 
sible. The data by themselves signify nothing at all. 
All real significance is given them by the activity which 
postulates that they stand for a reality not contained in 
themselves. 

But this ampliative activity involved in all serious 
judgments upon data takes two principal forms. It 
takes first of all not the form of a wish or desire that 
something may turn out to be so and so, but appears as 
a simple acknowledgment that something is so and so. 
The simplest case of active judgments is perhaps to be 
seen in judgments of memory. Though in any present 
moment only the content of this moment can be actu- 
ally given, yet we commonly suppose or assume that 
part of this content, the faint part called a representa- 
tion, stands for a past that was given as actually as the 
present is now given. To declare that there has been a 
past time at all, is to attribute to some element of the 
present a reality that does not belong to it as present. It 
would be easy to show that a great part of the judg- 
ments about an objectively real world depend upon the 
recognition of the past as having once been actually 
present. Therefore, memory is a part and basis of all 
important beliefs about the real world, and we may say 
that there is in most knowledge as a second element, in 
addition to what is given, an acknowledgment of some- 
thing that is not given, but that 1s said to be remembered 
or believed as a part of past experience. In knowledge, 
then, not only is something given, but very commonly, 
too, something is acknowledged or accepted as real or 


202 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


valid over and above what 1s directly given. And the 
whole past is a characteristic subject of this simple 
acknowledgment. Whatever is acknowledged we regard 
as absolute and unchangeable. The past does not alter. 
The most transient experience is eternal in so far forth 
as it is eternally true that this experience actually was 
when it was. Two elements of knowledge have thus 
been distinguished, viz., (1) That which is Given, the 
Datum, (2) That which is acknowledged or admitted as 
real, the Positum. There remains in many cases of judg- 
ment a third element corresponding to the second kind 
of ampliative activity in judgment. 

3. When I judge: “The sun will be totally eclipsed at 
some calculable date:” “The tides will continue to fall 
and rise at certain intervals”; “Two and two will al- 
ways make four”’; in all such cases I do more than 
acknowledge that present data stand for truth not given 
as a part of them. I actively expect future experience. 
It is plain that without expectation of a future, my 
acknowledgment of the reality of past time would have 
little worth. Unless I acknowledge something more 
than is datum of a present moment, there is no real 
world at all for me to work in. Unless I do more than 
acknowledge my posita, there is no work to be done in 
the real world when I have it. Expectancy is the third 
element of knowledge, and for action the most immedi- 
ately important element. You cannot rigidly prove the 
validity of any expectation, because you cannot reduce 
what is expected to a mere datum. There is no chance 
of demonstrating that any present moment is not the 
end of all time. For the future is not a datum. If it 
were, it would be no future. Nor is the future simply 
acknowledged as real. It is expected. That the expec- 
tation is attended with the utmost confidence I admit. 


TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 203 


But the confidence simply expresses the vigor of the 
mental act whereby we postulate at any moment that 
there will be a future. There may be some kinds of 
judgment without active expectation, but these are not 
the practically important judgments. Judgments about 
the possible are generally, I apprehend, syntheses of 
what is acknowledged with what is expected. Science 
and philosophy, popular every day beliefs, and all, even 
the most exalted faith are thus built up out of judgments 
about data, judgments about that which is acknowledged 
as real, about that which is expected, about that which 
is conceived as possible. Judgments of possibility play 
a great part in all thought, and especially in all abstract 
thought, but do not as I conceive, form a class by them- 
selves. Thus, then, the special province of judgments 
about data is the present. Past experience is the par- 
ticular field of judgments about what is simply acknowl- 
edged or posited as real or valid. To future experience 
refer the judgments of expectation. Both the judgments 
of acknowledgment and those of expectation contribute 
to our ideas of possible experience. And all conceivable 
truth is contained within the limits of the past, 
future, and possible experience of conscious beings. 


THe Nature or Conpucr 


Having thus considered how knowledge takes place 
in our conscious life, we have to speak next of the rela- 
tion conduct bears to knowledge. Knowing is, we have 
seen, itself activity. Even judgments that are confined 
to the data are the results of an activity of comparison 
and distinction. Judgments of acknowledgment and ex- 
pectation are by so much the more cases of activity, for 
in them something is postulated beyond and above the 
data. But if knowledge is activity, nobody would call 


204 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


simple knowledge a species of conduct. Conduct is ac- 
tivity directed towards an end. To form the idea of an 
end, a somewhat complex synthesis is necessary. In a 
present moment of experience there must be at least one 
desire, 7. e., a certain sort of feeling, itself apprehended 
as a datum. There must be also a simple judgment of 
expectation. For when we act we expect future experi- 
ence of some sort, and wish to affect that experience. 
There must be also a judgment of possibility, 7. e., an 
acknowledgment of some fixed objective relation of 
which we propose to avail ourselves, coupled with an ex- 
pectation of some particular case under that relation 
which may occur if our act is properly directed. Out of 
all this complex state of consciousness we form by syn- 
thesis the idea of acting for an end. To act for a purpose 
is to seek satisfaction for a momentary desire, by mak- 
ing real one of several possible experiences. When we 
determine to act for an end we conceive of the possible 
experiences, we expect that at least one of them will be- 
come real; and we determine to make one of the number 
real, expecting that it will satisfy our desire. If more 
than one desire is present at the moment of action one 
only conquers or is chosen, and so the act satisfies that 
one. Conduct or action for an end is then, made possi- 
ble, (1) through desires, (2) through judgments of ex- 
pectation, (3) through judgments of possibility, (4) 
through the entirely unique moment of choice or con- 
quest of one desire over opposing ones, that moment, 
which we cannot further describe, and which we call by 
the name of Will. It matters not now whether we con- 
ceive this Will as free or not. 

Now conduct is of the simplest form when at the 
moment of choice one desire only is in consciousness, 
when there is but one possible way of fulfilling it, and 


TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 205 


when the expected experience fills a single instant just 
in the future. If I lift my arm for the sake of showing 
that I can do so, or put a piece of candy in my mouth for 
the sake of its flavor, my conduct is of the simplest form. 
Suppose, however, that instead of conforming my action 
to an expected future of one instant only, my conscious 
expectation at the moment of acting covers a good deal 
of future time. Thus, when I am about to put candy 
into my mouth, suppose that I expect not only the com- 
ing moment, but think of the next few hours. My con- 
duct may be modified. For every definite expectation of 
future experience is accompanied with a definite acknowl- 
edgment or memory of past experience, and the future 
expected is always more or less like the past remem- 
bered. My memory in this case may be of past indiges- 
tion resulting from eating candy. My thought may be 
thereupon one of possible future indigestion. A new 
desire may contend with my desire to eat candy. My 
conduct whether in eating or in refraining will be of 
a more complex character. There will be more elements 
in it. The same thing is true no matter what the 
particular object of conduct is. The general princi- 
ple follows: That conduct is as a rule more and more 
complex according as the future experience that is 
expected at the moment of acting is more and more 
extended. For expectation of an extended future experi- 
ence is commonly attended with an acknowledgment of 
a past experience proportionately extended, and acknowl- 
edgment of past experience includes the consciousness 
of pleasures and pains included in this past experience, 
and so is attended with a consciousness of desires mani- 
fold and various in proportion as the conceived past is 
more and more extended. To expect a single sweet taste 
I need but to remember one or two moments in the past. 


206 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


To expect definitely a term’s work, I need to remember 
a term’s work. To expect definitely a sea voyage, I need 
to remember a sea voyage. To expect definitely the 
content of a future century of the world’s history, im- 
plies an activity based upon whatever definite concep- 
tion and acknowledgment we have of a past century. 
And so in general our idea of the future whose coming 
we expect is proportionate in extent and definiteness to 
our memory or our conception of the past whose validity 
we acknowledge. And thus the complexity of our con- 
duct is determined by the extent of time we take into 
account. The present moment is given. To act with 
reference to it alone, is not conduct at all. Conduct is 
first found when in the present we act with reference to 
at least one future moment, forming our expectation of 
what this moment may be through an act of acknowl- 
edgment of what some past moment was. And conduct 
increases in complexity and definiteness according as we 
act with reference to a more extended time, posit a 
greater past time as real, expect a greater future time as 
yet to come. 

Observe that in all this we are not speaking of the evo- 
lution of conduct from the simple to the complex, but 
are only defining conduct according to its different 
grades. We are greatly aided, however, in this analytic 
work by the lucid discussions of Mr. Spencer’s Data of 
Ethics. The use of all this long way of argument will I 
hope soon appear. 


Conpuct APPROVED OR DISAPPROVED 


Conduct is attended with knowledge. Knowledge is 
directly of the present, and only by acknowledgment or 
by expectation is there a knowledge of past and future. 
Conduct is more complex according as the present mo- 





TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 207 


ment is conceived as standing in relation to a more ex- 
tended past and future time. By means, therefore, of 
the process whereby thought always transcends the data 
of thought and postulates or constructs what is not per- 
ceived, does conduct become first possible at all, and 
then, with knowledge, more complex. 

But now, how do we judge conduct as good or bad? 
First, in so far as it accomplishes its ends. Secondly, in 
so far as the past and future acknowledged and expected 
in the moment of conduct are more extended and are 
more definitely taken into account. If desiring to taste 
candy I throw it into the sea my conduct is absurd. I 
should have put it into my mouth. My conduct is not 
such as to produce the desired effect. If wishing solely 
to avoid indigestion, I knowingly eat unwholesome 
things, my conduct is absurd. I should have eaten 
wholesome things. But not alone for its failure to adapt 
itself to ends is conduct judged. Far more important in 
an ethical point of view is the approval or disapproval of 
conduct because of the nature of the ends themselves. 
Conduct may be not only absurd, but low, contemptible, 
detestable, wicked, according as its ends are more or less 
plainly evil. And how may the ends of conduct them- 
selves be evil? In reply let us see how they may be 
graded in value at all. | 

An act is complex according to the extent of time that 
was taken into account in performing it. It is good or 
evil in a similar ratio, according to the extent of con- 
scious experience that it is designed to affect, and ac- 
cording to the way in which it is designed to affect that 
experience. At the moment of deliberately doing any- 
thing I conceive of its future consequence. Suppose the 
act is pulling the trigger of a gun. Suppose I conceive of 
the amusement that may be expected from pulling the 


208 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


trigger, and of the hurtful consequences that may follow 
from a careless discharge of the gun. Each of these con- 
ceptions is an expectation of future experience. Now 
suppose that, after all, the expectation of momentary 
pleasure overbalances for me the fear of future hurt from 
the discharge, and I pull the trigger. The result, perhaps 
iS Serlous injury. My act is to be disapproved of. Why? 

Not because in it deeds were wrongly adjusted to ends. 
On the contrary, my end was the amusement of pulling 
the trigger, and I attained my end when I pulled it. Be- 
cause, then, the chosen end was not the right one. Why 
not right? Had I known nothing at all of the danger, 
never before having seen a gun, had I felt the same 
desire for amusement and performed the same act, no 
one would blame me, though one might deplore my ig- 
norance. My act was wrong because, conceiving as I 
did of two possible experiences, one of slight pleasure, the 
other of great pain, I chose to make both real, because 
the little pleasure seemed worth more to me than the 
great pain could overbalance. My stupidity was inex- 
cusable. I conceived of both consequences. I knew the 
dangers and yet I chose them. How was it possible for 
me to do so? Plainly, because the danger, though con- 
ceived and expected, seemed less real to me than the 
pleasure. Here was my fault. Ignorance would have 
screened me from blame. Awkwardness in adjusting my 
acts to my ends would have brought me pity or ridicule. 
Deliberate neglect of one of two expected experiences 
brings condemnation upon me. Knowledge gave me 
certain expectations. Desire colored them falsely. 
Knowing what I did I yet chose the worse for the better 
experience, disregarding the expectation of evil conse- 
quences, and viewing it as less real than the expectation 
of good consequences, I chose against light. My end 


TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 209 


was ill. My act is to be condemned. Condemned, be it 
noted apart from its actual consequences. If a lucky 
accident were to keep the gun from going off or injury 
from resulting, although I ought to have expected both, 
my act is just as bad, for its intent was the choice of 
great danger and small amusement, instead of safety 
and a trifling sacrifice. Acts are approved or disap- 
proved according to the expectation with which they 
are performed, not according to results. 

I have taken a simple instance of disapproval to illus- 
trate how conduct is judged with reference to its ends. 
To summarize: Conduct is approved when it is such as 
is performed with full and equal attention to all the fu- 
ture experiences conceived at the time of performance, 
as possible results of the act in question. And to pay 
full and equal attention to all possible results signifies 
choosing the act so that all its conceived future conse- 
quences, near or remote, shall form the most desirable 
ageregate. Or again, conceive all the expected conse- 
quences of an act, near and remote, as now and here 
present and given. Choose the act so that these conse- 
quences should form the most satisfactory present 
experience that is possible. This is the first rule of con- 
duct, simply stated: In thy acts treat all the future as if 
it were present. Let not a consequence believed by thee 
to be probable, escape thy notice because it 1s so remote. 
Suppose that thou hadst to suffer all the consequences 
at once and at this very instant. What act wouldst thou 
then think most desirable? Consider and choose that. 
On such a basis as this are acts judged with reference to 
their ends. 


210 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


Morat ApprRovAL OF ConpbuUcT 


But thus far I seem to have been speaking only of 
maxims of prudence. Conduct would be approved on 
grounds of worldly wisdom if all expected consequences 
were treated with equal regard to their intrinsic desir- 
ableness. What we may call the illusion of perspective 
in time would be avoided. However remote the conse- 
quences, prudence demands that if known they shall be 
estimated with equal scrutiny. Now how may this 
maxim be transformed from one of selfish expediency 
into a maxim of moral conduct? We may now reap the 
fruit of our previous analysis of consciousness in general. 
One of the most serious problems in all ethical discus- 
sion may perhaps, thus be solved. 

When I estimate the consequences of my acts, for 
whom are these consequences? Do I mean the conse- 
quences for me, or for my fellows, or for all of us? Am I 
to measure the personal consequences for myself first 
and then for my neighbor? Let us reflect. Here is the 
conflict of egoism and altruism, left unsettled in our pre- 
liminary study, now facing us again. Can we bring it to 
a close? I answer, we have the means for a theoretical 
solution of the puzzle. The practical solution belongs, 
perhaps, to far-off centuries. 

What do I mean by myself, and the consequences for 
myself? What by my neighbor, and the consequences 
for him? Let us not fear such questions. They need 
careful attention, but they are forced upon us, are not 
to be avoided. What do I mean by myself? Do I mean 
a being, existent above and through all the changes of 
consciousness, identical, the subject of all my thoughts 
and experiences? Perhaps that is what I mean, but one 
thing is plain, such a permanent, identical being is never 





TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 211 


given to me at all in experience. For let us return to our 
first analysis. Given is the content of one present mo- 
ment, no past, no future. The past may be acknowl- 
edged as having been, the future, may be expected as 
yet tocome. The present only is datum. Therefore, no 
identical absolutely existent being can be directly given 
in my experience. Given may be a feeling of personality, 
a peculiar interest in a particular kind of conceived past 
and future experience and an emotion of sefishness or of 
self-respect. But my existence as a permanent real en- 
tity is no more and no less given in consciousness than is 
the existence of my neighbor. I acknowledge certain 
past experiences, and with some of these I group a cer- 
tain feeling of interest, and find the conceptions of them 
very vivid; and these conceived experiences I call mine 
and the acknowledgment of them as real I call memory. 
So quite vividly and with a peculiar interest I expect 
certain future experiences to be real, and these I call my 
future, and the expectation of them I call personal hopes 
and fears. But my conception of a real past and a real 
future does not stop here. I also conceive and acknowl- 
edge as real many past experiences that are not mine, 
and expect the reality of many future experiences equally 
different from those that seem so vivid as being future 
deeds or states called “mine.”’ The lack of the feeling of 
self-interest in conceiving them does not make these con- 
ceived experiences less acknowledged and expected real- 
ities. The difference is an emotional one, not one of 
thought. I know my neighbor to be as real as my self. 
His experiences are no more given to me than my own 
past and future experiences are now given. Yet none the 
less I posit their reality. How and why I do so does not 
matter. I know not how and why I should postulate my 
own past and future as real, when they are not given, 


212 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


The fact is I do so postulate them. And the fact is that 
I do conceive of my neighbor, with all his past and fu- 
ture as real like myself. 

By myself I mean then, a certain aggregate of com- 
paratively vivid (2. e., acknowledged and expected) ex- 
periences, with whose present conception there is joined 
a certain peculiar feeling of interest, commonly called 
the selfish interest. By my neighbor I mean an aggre- 
gate of conceived (7. e., acknowledged and expected) 
present, past, and future experiences, with whose pres- 
ent conception, itself comparatively faint, I do not join 
the selfish interest. So too, the whole world of conscious 
life I conceive as also at some time real, as past and fu- 
ture, as in some way like this present conscious moment, 
as variously grouped, as filled with different conflicting 
selfish desires; and I conceive all this though nothing of 
the entire conscious world, myself included, is given me 
but this one insignificant present moment. So wonder- 
ful is the work of conscious activity. 

This much for our definitions. Now for their applica- 
tion. The essence of approved conduct, as we saw, 1s the 
treating in a present given moment of the conceived 
possible contents of future consciousness as if they were 
even now data, and the determination of actions accord- 
ing to the result of such treatment. In determining my 
actions by the conceived future results, what results am 
I to consider? Those to myself? But these results are 
not conceived as in themselves more real than those to 
my neighbor. The difference is that the results to my- 
self are conceived with a certain peculiar feeling of inter- 
est which makes them seem more real and which is not 
a part of the conception of the results to other conscious 
beings. Ought this feeling of self-interest to affect my 
action? 


TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 2G 


Think of the parallel case of prudent conduct. At 
some moment I am more interested 1n eating candy 
than in avoiding indigestion. Yet the conceived evil of 
indigestion is known to be greater than the conceived 
good of a sweet taste. Or | am more interested in pull- 
ing a trigger than in avoiding the risk of injury. Yet the 
conceived injury is a greater evil than would be the loss 
of the pleasure. Now my conduct in these cases is ap- 
proved if I treat all the consequences as if they were 
present, disregarding the prejudice created by my mo- 
mentary interest, and then choose such consequences as 
are in this view intrinsically most desirable. My con- 
duct is not approved, if I give myself over to the illusion 
of time-perspective, or choose a conceived consequence, 
not for its intrinsic desirableness, but because I am the 
slave of my momentary interest. Approved action con- 
sists in weighing all future consequences according to 
their conceived value, not according to the value that 
my passion gives them. 

Now it would only be carrying this principle out to 
its full extent if I treat in like fashion the conceived fu- 
ture experiences of my neighbor. In these I have not 
the same selfish interest, but I do postulate them as 
equally real and unreal with my own conceived future. 
My existence as an enduring entity is not more immedi- 
ately given than is the existence of my neighbor as an 
enduring entity. The same activity that postulates by 
expectation my future, postulates his future as well. 
The consequences of my act for me, are not more real 
than they are for him. If then, I am to order my con- 
duct according to all future experience regarded as equal- 
ly an object of striving, I must include my neighbor’s 
future with my own, and order my conduct accordingly. 
If the injury produced by carelessly discharging a gun 


214 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


is not an injury in my future, but in the future of 
another conscious being, none the less is it expected 
as a real injury. And if all conceived future states 
are to be taken into equal account in my conduct, 
then all my fellow-beings are equally objects of my care 
with myself. My interest in them is not so strong, but 
real future experience for them and for me is equally 
real, 7. ¢., is equally expected though not given. Selfish 
feeling makes a difference. Insight views all as equally 
real. Thus mere consistency brings me to the following 
considerations: Whatever experience is to come, will 
come. All conscious moments of painful and pleasurable 
experience are equally real when they do come. No con- 
scious moment is a datum for any previous moment, but 
can only be expected in that moment. All future con- 
sciousness then, as equally to be expected, as equally 
real when it comes, as equally unreal till it comes, is 
equally an object of present striving. Every present 
act should, therefore, be ordered for the welfare of all 
future conscious life, in case it should be ordered for the 
welfare of any future conscious life at all. That any 
moment or series of moments of future consciousness is 
at present more interesting than another is of no conse- 
quence. The essence of conduct is the putting of insight 
before desire, when naturally desire is before insight. 
And the insight into the identical nature of all past and 
future life as conscious life is the result of our analysis of 
the nature of consciousness. This analysis does not give 
as a result Me, an absolute entity, distinct from all the 
World in which I work, but the World of conscious life 
postulated as all equally real or to be realized, as all 
equally an object of striving, as in every one of its count- 
less moments of pleasure and pain equally worthy of 
regard. The inevitable result of this insight is the postu- 


TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 2) 4 


late that conduct can be approved only when its end is 
the good of the whole world of future experience as this — 
world is conceived at the moment of action. The uni- 
versal end of conduct is the only end free from illusion. 
Every other end implies the conception of experiences 
as certainly future and yet the contradictory conception, 
the product of a desire, that some of these expected ex- 
periences have more reality than others. This is the il- 
lusion of selfishness. The Ego, however, is not more a 
datum than is the Alter. My future is as much a mere 
expectation as is your future at this moment. The re- 
ality of the one is the reality of the other. Work for one 
must become work for both, or else be indefensible. 

Now to be sure this insight and its consequences can- 
not be rigidly proven. They can only be shown. My 
claim is that here is expressed the essence of that moral 
sense with which we began our analysis. Condemna- 
tion of cruel and commendation of kind acts, is like the 
condemnation of imprudent acts and the praise of self- 
control, in so far as in all cases the act of one moment is 
condemned when it disregards the claims of expected 
moments, and praised when it views all expected mo- 
ments as if they were real and present. All the cases of 
moral approval or disapproval of acts are cases of ap- 
proval of the insight to which all conceived conscious 
life is as one, and of disapproval of the contradictory 
state of mind for which a conceived future is yet treated 
by desire as if it were not conceived at all. 

The moral sense then is based on this maxim: All 
future consciousness is to be equally regarded in our 
conduct, because all is alike not given but only expected, 
and all is alike real when it comes. Therefore the rule of 
conduct 1s: Act as thou wouldst wish to have acted were 
all the consequences of thy act for all the world of being 


216 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


here and now given as a fact of thine own present con- 
sciousness. Or again: Choose thy deeds so that their 
outcome shall seem the best possible outcome when all 
the results are viewed at once as a whole in their intrin- 
sic good or evil. Thus conduct is made absolutely con- 
sistent. 

Notice now these things about our result. Acts are 
judged according to their purpose, not according to their 
actual outcome. Only the future of which I conceive 
can affect my conduct. Whatever really comes of my 
deed, the deed is right if by intention, at the moment of 
action, I took into account all the expected future con- 
sequences to myself and to all other beings, and treated 
these conceived results as if they were alike present and 
given at the moment of action. The results that I did 
not conceive of I could not take into account. Notice 
again that all conflict of egoism and altruism is set aside, 
by making all approved conduct equally altruistic. 
Every moment of right conduct acts for other moments 
as if they were present. And this process is carried on 
without limit. Notice further that work for others is 
shown to be but the consistent expression of the same 
tendency that is expressed in prudent work for self. The 
disregard of all interests but those in the intrinsic value 
of the expected experience is the essence of prudence. 
The same impartiality carried out in full is absolute al- 
truism. Notice in fine, that this result follows from our 
analysis, and could never be obtained from the history 
of the physical evolution of morality. For the history of 
evolution, the individuals are absolutely separate be- 
ings, each moved by selfish desires. From these selfish 
desires moral acts could be deduced only by exhibiting 
the acts as enlightened selfishness. The incompleteness 
of this view we saw before. But for the analytic view no 


TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG pit 


such restriction appears. We examine consciousness as 
it is, not as it grew; and we find in it no absolute ego 
given, no organized self, who must be served above all. 
We find instead a present moment, acknowledging past 
moments and expecting future moments all different 
from itself and excluded by itself. Conduct is work at 
one of these moments for other conceived coming mo- 
ments. Consistent conduct is work at any one moment 
for all conceived future moments. Absolutely consistent 
conduct is the only conduct that meets perfect moral 
approval. No matter how great the conflicting interest, 
be it passion or laziness or general selfishness, right con- 
duct is that only which, disregarding the conflicting 
present interest itself, looks to the intrinsic worth of the 
expected consequences. And so for this higher insight 
each moment of every life is judged in the presence of 
the whole of consciousness conceived as one being, or 
better, as one moment of being. Every moment-atom of 
this infinite life is approved if, knowing the other atoms, 
it recognized their claims in its action. For each deed of 
good done at any moment for another moment, the 
moral sense has the approving word that comes as it 
were from the very throne of the one infinite conscious- 
ness: Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of 
these, ye have done it unto me. This sense of the abso- 
lute worth of all experience, this insight into the unity of 
life, has been the continual theme of moral teaching and 
preaching, of all true religion, since there were minds to 
think. One has no new doctrine to teach about it. One 
can but restate and try to justify by analysis the old one. 
And I confess that for this purpose I know of no possible 
way other than that taken. If we give up this doctrine, 
I see nothing but moral scepticism before us, with the 
claims of self and of others left unsettled, with the illu- 


218 TESTS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 


sion of selfishness perpetually tormenting us, with a 
sophistical torturing of history to make it prove what it 
cannot prove, that boundless self-sacrifice is a good, in 
brief, with all the half-heartedness of uncritical ethics. 
Let us throw these incomplete theories aside, or use 
them when we can as stones to build up a better building. 
Practically we shall remain what we were before. In 
everyday life the illusion of selfishness will lead us cap- 
tive as much as ever. But in theory, perchance, upon 
the basis here proposed, we may raise a structure in 
honor of the true and eternal object of life, which is the 
good of the great conscious soul whose atoms of experi- 
ence are the moments of our individual lives. For this 
One Absolute Being all our right work is wrought. 

Such is the basis of the solution that I would propose 
for the ethical problem as above stated. That the solu- 
tion is not fully given I need not formally admit, since 
the fact is plain. The relations of moral agents could 
not be fully treated until I had gone further into the 
question of the principles of choice among conceived 
consequences of action. But the general method of mak- 
ing choice is clear, and that alone formed the subject of 
my present study, which has been confined to the prob- 
lem of egoism and altruism. 





ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 
[ 1880 ] 


human thought can be carried on in any one of 

three distinct fashions. First, thought may be 
viewed as a fact of mental life, to be studied, like all 
other mental facts, according to the methods of psy- 
chology. The psychological mode of treatment tries to 
find out how human thought grew up, how it is related 
to the environment, and how in actual use it is combined 
with other mental phenomena. In the second place, how- 
ever, human thought may be studied by means of logi- 
cal analysis, with a view to discovering wherein consists 
. the connection among the successive acts of a train of 
thought, what are the fundamental axioms of all 
thought, and what is the final result of all efforts to sep- 
arate the formal and universal from the material and 
accidental elements of knowledge. A third method of 
studying thought-processes has often occurred to me as 
proper and fruitful, a method which I long considered 
quite the same as the method of logical analysis, but 
which I am now led to regard as in some important re- 
spects distinct therefrom. I mean the mode of examina- 
tion which, for the sake of technical exactitude of terms 
I shall name the teleological analysis of thought. After 
we have studied in the fashion common in our day the 
history of thinking processes as they grow up in the in- 
dividual or in the race, after we have gone yet deeper 
and studied the truly philosophical problems concerning 
the principles of knowledge, as modern logic brings them 
before us, we shall yet have open to our approach and 
still unconquered the problems as to the fundamental 


Tis discussion of the fundamental problems of 


220 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


purposes of all thought, and as to the way in which 
these fundamental purposes are realized in the thought- 
structures that we have been examining. I do not claim 
to have mastered either the psychological or the logical 
problems of the theory of thinking. Yet after having 
noted as I studied these somewhat familiar but still 
stubborn questions the lack of appreciation which seems 
to exist in view of the importance of the third class of 
questions, I may not be wrong if I try to lay stress in 
this paper on the problem that I may thus briefly state: 
What is the final end of purely theoretic thought, and in 
what relation to the fundamental axioms or principles 
of human reasoning does this final end stand? 

To study the purposes of human thought is impossible 
unless we know something of the structure of thought. 
My effort at teleological analysis depends, therefore, 
in some wise upon both the previously mentioned kinds 
of thought-analysis. Yet psychology and logic furnish 
rather statements of the problem than solutions thereof. 
Though nothing can be more fundamental in its sphere 
than the exhaustive logical analysis of the principles, 
assumptions, methods, and great results of thought, yet 
it is possible to go further than this analysis by viewing 
the whole material in a new light, and by asking new 
questions about it. Though, on the other hand, no 
mental fact lies outside of the province of psychology, 
yet psychology seeks mainly to give a history of the evo- 
lution of mental processes, not an analysis of their sig- 
nificance in view of any end. And furthermore, as 
psychology is in the widest sense of the term a physical 
science, that is, a science of explanation of effects by 
causes and of facts by laws, psychology is itself logically 
dependent upon the results of the philosophical analysis 
of knowledge, and, therefore, cannot supersede either 


i ie on 
a a ae | 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 221 


the analysis of thought-principles or the study of 
thought-purposes. Our relation to the other modes of 
studying thought is, therefore, this: We treat the prob- 
lems of the logical thought-analysis, but we treat them 
in a different way, asking ourselves not primarily, what 
are the forms and assumptions of thought, but what end 
has thought in making these assumptions? As for psy- 
chology, we regard it in this essay not as a logical basis, 
but a storehouse of suggestions. That it 1s worth while 
thus to distinguish the teleological analysis of thought 
from the psychological analysis and from the logical 
analysis, only the result of our efforts can make clear to 
us. I shall waste no time in an elaborate justification 
at this point. 


I 


THE PurposE OF THOUGHT AS THE ATTAINMENT 
or TRUTH 


What, then, is the end of human thought? Or has 
thought any one final purpose? An answer immediately 
suggests itself. Theoretical human thought, says this 
answer, has but one ultimate purpose, to wit, the attain- 
ment of truth. All thinking is to lead to knowledge, 7. e., 
to objective certainty. And knowledge or objective cer- 
tainty means the possession of truth. Every other aim 
is subordinate. 

This answer is plausible and sufficiently vague to be a 
good text for a popular philosophy. Let us try to make 
the notion more exact. 

What is here meant by the possession of truth? Or, 
more simply, if thought had attained the goal here 
placed before it, in what state would it be? How does 
the imperfect state of mind that precedes the attain- 


222 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


ment of the truth differ from the perfect state of mind 
when the truth has been reached? Wherein lies the con- 
trast between seeking and finding? In answer let us re- 
member that by truth is commonly meant either the 
agreement of a belief with some external reality, or else 
this external reality itself. “Ye shall know the truth,” 
means apparently the same as, “Ye shall know what 
really is.”’ But, ‘‘This belief is nothing more or less than 
the truth” seems to mean “This belief agrees with what 
really is.” In either sense, the attainment of truth im- 
plies essentially the same thing; viz., an agreement be- 
tween thought and external reality. This meaning is the 
one I choose to give to the expression: “‘ Thought has for 
its end the attainment of truth.” While I have no doubt 
that some meaning could be given to the word truth 
which should make this account of the purposes of 
thought perfectly satisfactory, and while I am not dis- 
posed to hint that the purpose of theoretic thought can 
ever be the attainment of untruth, yet I am forced to 
see that if truth is taken in either one of the meanings 
that I have mentioned, and if by “attainment of truth” 
is meant the bringing of thought into correspondence 
with a reality external to thought, then the statement 
that the ultimate end of thought is the attainment of 
truth cannot be regarded as at all satisfactory. My rea- 
son for rejecting so plausible and simple a statement of 
the end of thought is one familiar to all students of 
philosophy, and in no wise original with me. Yet for 
the sake of clearness I must not pass it over too lightly, 
but must state it as if Protagoras and Berkeley had 
never existed. 

If thought reached its supposed goal, and was in 
agreement with external reality, would it be aware of 
this agreement, or would it be ignorant thereof? If the 





ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 228 


latter, if thought on reaching the truth did not know 
that it had reached the truth, then surely the end would 
not be attained. It is the nature of purpose that your 
actual success in carrying out your own purpose will be 
known to you. Otherwise you, who were alone con- 
cerned in carrying out your purpose, are never satisfied. 
And satisfaction and the attainment of a desired end, 
the fulfillment of a purpose, are the same thing. To say 
that one has accomplished his purpose and does not 
know the fact, can only have a sense if we mean that he 
has objectively done or accomplished something which, 
were he cognizant thereof, would in his mind produce 
the subjective state known as satisfaction with an 
achieved result. But this satisfaction was what the man 
must really have purposed, not the objective result 
without the satisfaction. Really to reach an end and to 
know that one has reached it, these express the same 
fact. 

If the attainment of truth is the end of thought, 
thought must be able, in case it can reach the end, to 
know of its success. Imagine then, that a thought cor- 
responds with an external reality. How can this corre- 
spondence be known? By comparison of the thought 
with the external reality? But the reality, being ex- 
ternal, is not in thought at all. Nothing but the thought 
itself is known directly. How can we compare the 
thought with the thing outside of it to see if they agree, 
when one of the terms only is given, and when the act of 
comparison would imply that both the terms should be 
given. That I can compare two thoughts 1s plain 
enough. That I can see to it that these are thoughts 
about the same subject matter, is, if not so plain, at 
least conceivable. But that I should be able to know 
by immediate comparison the correspondence of two 


224 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


facts whereof one is known to me by and in the other, 
that I should be sure of the validity of my thought 
about external things when only this thought is given to 
me as a subject for judgment, and when the external 
things could only be objects of immediate knowledge by 
ceasing to be external, all this is entirely mysterious. If 
agreement between thought and outer reality be all that 
is meant by truth, and if by outer reality be meant any- 
thing whatever that is not and cannot be wholly in 
thought and of thought, an idea among ideas, then to 
say that the attainment of truth is the goal of thought 
is to say that thought seeks an end that could never 
conceivably be attained, an end of which no clear notion 
can be formed. And what is this but declaring that 
thought has no end at all, is entirely purposeless. 

To be sure, nothing is as yet said about the existence 
of an external reality. Whether there be real things 
apart from thoughts is a matter that does not now con- 
cern my argument. I ask only, how is the mentioned 
purpose of thought to be formulated? And my answer 
is, the mentioned purpose of thought cannot be formu- 
lated, is no definite purpose at all. Never can one defi- 
nitely figure or think out a condition of thought in 
which a correspondence between a present notion and 
an external thing not a content of thought could be 
known through actual comparison. At any moment 
only a content of thought could be known. Of an ex- 
ternal thing only so much could be known, that it was 
no thought at all. Whether and how it might be in 
agreement with the thought, only an infinite mind con- 
ceived as identical both with the external thing itself 
and with the finite being’s thought about the thing, 
could be supposed capable of knowing or even of clearly 
conceiving. 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT calc 


If actual and conscious agreement with external re- 
ality is not the end of thought, I am still quite prepared 
to admit that in the theory I am examining there is a 
considerable element of valuable suggestion. Knowledge 
of agreement with external reality may not be an in- 
telligible end of thought-activity; but there may be 
some meaning in the expression that the end of thought 
is the attainment of confidence in the agreement of the 
thought with external reality. Confidence is a purely 
subjective affection. I may not clearly conceive what 
I mean by agreement between thought and things; yet 
I may be very confident that I can reach or have 
reached some ill-defined sort of agreement of my be- 
liefs with a reality beyond consciousness. It is at any 
rate quite intelligible to say that all thinking aims at 
that kind of subjective persuasion which we commonly 
find among men. But this statement needs analysis. If 
certainty in the sense of conviction and confidence that 
we are in agreement with an external world, is the end 
of our thinking, let us see how we can intelligibly define 
the nature of this conviction towards which we strive. 

I ask again: If the goal as thus anew defined is at- 
tained, if in our thinking we have passed beyond a state 
of uncertainty and suspense to a state of surety that our 
thought is valid and that it has some kind of corre- 
spondence with. external reality, what is the nature of 
our conviction? 

First, just as before, so here we shall not be able to 
say in what consists the agreement between our thought 
and the reality which is independent of it. We shall 
according to the present hypothesis, believe that there 
is some kind of agreement between the thought and the 
things. But how the thought can correspond with 
something of which we only know that it is not thought, 


226 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


this we shall never clearly grasp so long as we are finite 
beings at all. The confidence that is here said to be the 
goal of our thinking will be merely a persuasion that 
some conception which we have and which we do know, 
corresponds in an entirely unknown way with a reality 
of which directly we know simply nothing. Such a per- 
suasion could surely give no other warrant for its valid- 
ity than its own subjective evidence. If we call a 
statement of such an absolute ungrounded self-contained 
conviction an axiom, then we may say that in this modi- 
fied form of definition the end of thought is declared to 
be the attainment of axiomatic certainty. The nature 
of the correspondence of which we are so certain will 
remain perfectly mysterious. Secondly, however, in at- 
taining what is now said to be the goal of thought, we 
shall reach not merely this perfect and mysterious con- 
fidence that our thought in some of its forms agrees 
with an unknown reality, but we shall gain the power 
to compare other beliefs that in themselves seem not so 
certain with these absolutely unprovable and certain 
beliefs, and so shall come to possess not merely axioms, 
but systems of derived truths. The whole purpose of 
thought would then be thus described: Thought aims at 
finding and stating axioms, and at bringing all our be- 
liefs into harmony and connection with the axioms. 
The end of thinking would be attained (a) if we could 
enumerate all possible axioms and could have a perfect 
certainty of their agreement with external reality, and 
(2) if we could show as to all not-axiomatic beliefs that 
they are in agreement with the axioms, and follow from 
the axioms. 

We seem driven to modify in this way our opinion 
about the end of thought as being the attainment of 
truth. The real end of thought must be the attainment 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 205 


of some state of consciousness. In thinking we must be 
striving to reach some thought that is satisfactory. 
Therefore the real conscious purpose of thought must 
be something within the sphere of thought. Not ob- 
jective correspondence with reality as such, but at most, 
subjective confidence in the correspondence of thought 
with reality can be consciously sought or conceivably 
attained with an actual consciousness of attainment. 
And thus the simplest statement of the goal of thought 
seems to be that thought seeks to change uncertainty 
into confidence, and beliefs that appear as though they 
might not be in harmony with reality into beliefs of 
which we are mysteriously but perfectly convinced that 
they are in harmony with reality. 

Yet is this account final? Evidently thought tries to 
bring beliefs that are not axiomatic into agreement with 
and dependence upon beliefs that are axiomatic. But is 
it true that axioms express an unbounded and unfounded 
confidence in the agreement of our thought with un- 
knowable “things in themselves” outside of thought? 
Is the conviction which our thought aims to reach a 
conviction that our known conceptions resemble in un- 
knowable fashion unknowable noumena? This is surely, 
when stated, a very singular goal for human thought. 
Is it the actual goal? 

Let us take an example. There is a well-known axiom 
of number which may be stated thus: “Results of 
counting are independent of the order in which the indi- 
vidual things are counted.”’ Whether I begin with my 
thumb and count towards the little finger, or take the 
reverse order, I shall always find just five fingers on my 
hand. One order in counting is no better than another, 
unless we want to avoid danger of omissions or of repe- 
titions. This is an evident truth, accepted with perfect 


228 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


confidence. Does it express any confidence as to an 
agreement between a thought and an unknowable ex- 
ternal reality? My impression is that this axiom states 
merely an uniformity of experience. Given a set of ob- 
jects in experience sufficiently permanent to be counted, 
then the law holds good that whatever the things 
counted, be they colors or sounds or ideas of colors or 
sound or men or imaginary beings or footsteps or odors, 
I can count them in whatever order is convenient, and 
yet be sure that my result is entirely independent of the 
order of counting. I have here to make no assertion, 
however vague, about things in themselves. I deal only 
with an assumption made with perfect confidence, 
about my experience, actual and possible, and about 
what must hold true of this experience. (Cf. Clifford, 
“Lectures and Essays,” Vol. 1, pp. 326 sqq.) 

Here is a case where perfect confidence is attained, 
which seems nevertheless to be not at all a confidence in 
an agreement of thought with reality beyond thought, 
but solely a confidence in the permanence of a certain 
relation or set of relations among facts of experience. 
Here, then, the goal of thought would seem to be the 
attainment of beliefs that express with full conviction 
certain enduring laws of human experience. The previ- 
ous statements must be once more modified. Shall we 
say that thought has two distinct ends, first the attain- 
ment of confidence that it is in correspondence with an 
unknowable reality, and second the attainment of con- 
fidence that some universal and necessary relation among 
the facts of experience has become known? Surely no 
student of Kant will be averse to admitting, at least 
provisionally, that the second of these ends 1s the genu- 
ine and important end of the great mass of our thought, 
whose object is the determination of possible experience. 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 229 


And it will be worth while for the present to omit all 
reference to the external and unknowable reality, whose 
agreement with thought may be in a vague but passion- 
ate way believed in, although what the agreement may 
be and mean is simply inconceivable. The more im- 
portant end of thought, if not the one highest end, is 
therefore the attainment of certainty as to the nature 
and laws of experience. To the end as thus defined we 
now pass. 


II 


THE Purpose or THOUGHT AS THE ANTICIPATION 
OF EXPERIENCE 


Let us glance back at our previous results. We set out 
to discover if possible the goal of human thought. The 
first suggestion that met us was that theoretic thought 
always seeks truth or correspondence with external 
reality. The objection was that we may know well what 
is the meaning of correspondence between one thought 
and another, but cannot well make out what may be the 
meaning of a correspondence between a thought and 
something that is not a thought but absolutely external 
thereto. Since the correspondence could never be known 
and tested within the sphere of our thought itself, and 
since it seems absurd to suppose that the goal of thought 
is one that even if attained in some mysterious way 
could still never be known as attained, we were led to 
modify our first statement. It seems plausible that, as 
is quite generally the case with deliberate human activ- 
ity, thought has for its ultimate purpose the attainment 
of some state of consciousness. The highest good for 
thought would then doubtless be the reaching of confi- 
dence in itself, confidence absolutely fixed and perfect. 


230 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


And, therefore, we were led to state the end of thought 
thus: ‘Thought seeks confidence that it is in agreement 
with objective reality.”’ Yet we were constrained to ad- 
mit that by this altered statement, by this substitution 
of perfect confidence in its own validity instead of the 
absolute validity itself as the actual goal of thinking, we 
had nevertheless been unable to escape the mystery in- 
volved in the assumption that thought agrees with 
what is not thought. And so our statement demands yet 
further study. At this point we were led to note that 
after all we are oftén content in our actual thinking with 
having attained beliefs, not as to the nature of the 
things in themselves, but as to the laws of human ex- 
perience. The goal of thought turns out to be, in fact, 
much less the gaining of confidence that we are masters 
of the hidden secrets of being, than the gaining of con- 
fidence that we can anticipate experience, and that we 
have power to know the laws of phenomena. ‘Leaving 
altogether our first form of statement we have, there- 
fore, begun with a new definition of the goal of thought. 
“Thought, we now say, has for its main object the at- 
tainment of mastery over our experience, so that we 
may predict the same, and know the ways in which its 
data are necessarily connected.” 

The analysis of this statement comes next in order. 
What would be a knowledge of some permanent and 
necessary law of all experience? And how should we be 
able to gain such a knowledge? Or, to put our questions 
in the old way again; if the goal of thought in this direc- 
tion is attained, what will be the resulting state of 
thought, and how will the perfect state of possession of 
assurance differ from the imperfect condition preceding? 

To illustrate the whole problem let us take one im- 
portant case, the so-called Axiom of Uniformity. In ad- 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT Ba 


hering to this axiom will any final purpose of theoretic 
thought be attained, and if so, how? 

The axiom of uniformity states that of necessity there 
will be in our experience some kind of regularity and 
fixity of succession, and in fact such regularity that, 
under like conditions, like results will always follow 
given agencies. What is the theoretic use of this axiom? 
What is the justification of making any use of it at all? 

Evidently the hardest part of the problem is to state 
the axiom of uniformity intelligibly, and in its simplest 
form, freed from all encumbrance. Once stated, if it be 
an axiom it will commend itself at once to our approval. 
And accepting it, we shall probably find out without 
difficulty its relation to the purpose of thought. The 
preliminary statement just given is, however, not simple 
and not convincing. What is the meaning of “‘like con- 
ditions?” Why is it certain that like results must follow 
from them? What is regularity of sequence in experi- 
ence? In answer let us study in succession certain of the 
views as to the axiom of uniformity. 

First, some one may assert that the axiom of uni- 
formity means that if in experience we have noted often 
a sequence of the phenomenon 4 upon the phenomenon 
a, then we have a right to expect that 4 will again follow 
when @ again appears in experience. This is the crudest 
form of the axiom of uniformity, the form corresponding 
to an inductio per enumerationem simplicem, and, there- 
fore, merely useful as a basis for more elaborate forms. 

Secondly, the claim may be made, that when an in- 
ductive sifting of experience has taught us that in many 
cases under observation a proves itself the indispensable 
antecedent of 4, and 4 a constant sequent upon a, the 
effect of other conditions having been eliminated or 
allowed for, then the connection noted between a and 6 


Dae ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


may be assumed to be causal and permanent, so that the 
appearance of a will entail the appearance of 4, unless 
sufficient hindrance to the effectiveness of a arises from 
some other source c. With some such statement as this 
the analysis of the processes of induction might be con- 
tent to begin its study. 

Here is made a fundamental assumption that there 
will be found to be some kind of enduring union among 
phenomena, so that every experience shall point to some 
other experience as necessarily connected with it. What 
is the ground and the use of this assumption? Note, be- 
fore going on to the answer, that the assumption as 
stated speaks only of regularity of succession in phe- 
nomena. Nothing is said of permanently existent 
things, but only of recurring sequences in experience. 
Now what purely theoretic purpose can be subserved by 
supposing that every fact of experience is joined in 
necessary ties with some other fact of actual or possible 
experience? Why not view the facts as facts, each by 
itself? Why not regard them as independent, and as 
capable of recurring in any order, however different 
from the observed order? 

A natural answer would be that habit, association of 
ideas, has impelled us to expect that the future will re- 
semble the past, the unobserved the observed. But this 
would not be a fair answer to our question. We ask not, 
how came we by our belief in the uniformity of experi- 
ence? but what purpose does this belief serve now that 
we have it, are conscious of it and can criticize it? 
Hume’s account of our belief in uniformity was a sug- 
gestive speculation in psychology. It did not answer the 
logical problem: “what is the authority of the belief?” 
nor does it satisfy us who now ask, what is the good of 


this belief? 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 233 


A better answer is the one stated in his rather odd 
fashion by Professor Schuppe in his “Erkenntnisstheo- 
retische Logik” (Bonn, 1878), in the chapter on “ Not- 
wendigkeit u. Moglichkeit” (Kap. x, pp. 195 sqq.; 
especially p. 198). Adapting his results to our present 
form of putting the question, I understand him to mean 
about as follows. The fundamental necessity of all 
thought is this, “dass wir weder von der Existenz der 
Welt noch von unserer eigenen Existenz zu abstrahi- 
ren vermégen.”’ We can neither think ourselves away 
without thinking the world away, nor can we think of 
ourselves as other than beings in a world of conscious 
experience. But if this is the case, if we can imagine any 
succession of facts only under the condition of thinking 
ourselves as spectators thereof, it follows that absolute 
irregularity in the succession of facts is impossible. 
“Denn eben dies gehért zur Existenz eines Bewusst- 
seins, dass sein Inhalt solch feste Ordnung hat.” In 
other words, if we try to think away all regularity of 
sequence from the world, we shall be trying to think 
ourselves away; and it is useless to undertake this feat. 
The attempt to conceive of the irregular experience is 
made by our author in this wise: “Dann hért doch 
selbstverstindlich jeder allgemeine Satz auf, jede auch 
die schlichteste u. einfachste Erfahrung, u. somit wurde 
ein solcher Mensch nicht dazu kommen seine Arme und 
Beine — gebrauchen zu lernen — Und dabei denke man 
noche an ein bewusstes Ich! Was fiir Denken wire wohl 
méglich, welche Gedanken kénnten entstehen, wenn 
wir auch wirklich eine Spur dumpfen Bewusstseins in 
solchem absolut regellosen Wechsel von Zustinden uns 
dachten. Die ‘feste Ordnung’ — gehért also unzweifel- 
haft zu den Grundbedingungen des bewussten Ich u. 
ihre Aufhebung hebt dieses u. somit die Welt auf.” The 


234 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


surety of the principle of uniformity consists therefore, 
in the fact that without some uniformity experience 
would be impossible. The purpose of holding the axiom, 
therefore (to come to our own special question) is the 
desire of thought to employ itself upon the future as a 
subject matter, and the impossibility of conceiving a 
future at all without conceiving it as made up of uni- 
form sequences. 

This attempt is one in nature with the numerous 
efforts to see in the unity of self-consciousness the type 
and ground of the unity we postulate in the world. We 
will not quarrel with these efforts as a class. We re- 
mark as to this effort only that it does not express the 
whole, or as it seems to me the most important part of 
the actual purpose of thought in its assumption of the 
principle of uniformity. Thought seeks not mere gen- 
eral and indefinite regularity of experience, but abso- 
lute uniformity of perfectly definite laws. Self-con- 
sciousness would surely not be made impossible, hardly 
even affected, by a moderate irregularity such as would 
imply no fixed connection of any one cause with any one 
effect. Memory and historical account of facts whose 
connection and definite uniformity of sequence is not at 
all perceived, is surely possible. What would be added 
to the completeness of self-consciousness by an opera- 
tion wherein for the mere history was substituted the 
scientific explanation of the facts? The advance would 
be great viewed from the side of the thinker. But the 
facts of experience and one’s knowledge that they are 
facts would not be altered or even improved. I fail to 
find, therefore, in Professor Schuppe’s account of the 
matter a sufficient basis for the use that he himself and 
human thought in general make of the axiom of uni- 
formity. 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 235 


If this effort to explain the aim of our thought in con- 
ceiving experience as uniform fails, another speedily 
suggests itself. If the former effort could not tell us why 
future experience must definitely resemble past experi- 
ence in so far as concerns the sequence of events, may 
we not hope for better results if we regard the principle 
itself as demanding only an hypothetical uniformity of 
sequences, at once exact and formal, the uniformity of 
the sequence of fixed results upon the placing of certain 
given things in certain determinate conditions? Con- 
fining ourselves then still wholly to experience, may we 
not state the axiom of uniformity thus: “Like things 
under like circumstances behave in like fashions?” 
Here we mean by thing not a “thing-in-itself’”’ beyond 
consciousness, but a certain determinate complex of 
experiences. The permanence of any law will then mean, 
not the permanence of any one kind of experience, but 
the permanence of relations among experiences. The 
previous account seemed to see in the axiom the asser- 
tion that there are limits to the variety of our experi- 
ence. Then our author tried to prove that there are 
actually such limits to variety. The proof was success- 
ful, but the limits were too broad for any purpose of 
thought. Now we state in a purely hypothetical way 
that if at any time the same thing is found in our experi- 
ence twice in the same circumstances we shall expect to 
notice the same behavior, and we shall expect with the 
utmost confidence. We ask again, what can be the pur- 
pose of thought in making this assumption? 

“The same purpose,” answers in substance Mr. 
Shadworth Hodgson, in his Philosophy of Reflection 
(Vol. ii, ch. ix, “On the Postulates and the Axioms of 
Uniformity’’) “the same purpose that we have in assum- 
ing the identity of everything with itself, to wit the pur- 


236 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


pose expressed in every act of attention, the purpose of 
noting what everything that passes through conscious- 
ness is, The axiom of uniformity is the postulate of 
identity applied to experience.” I thus paraphrase Mr. 
Hodgson’s discussion. To use now his own words (p. 
103, ch. VIII): “If there were no uniformity in nature, 
there could be no postulates of logic; if that uniformity 
were not universal and without exception, the postulates 
could not be universally and necessarily true. For 
while we asserted A — it would or at any rate might be 
changing into not A— and the postulate” (z. e. of the 
identity of A with itself) “would be falsified.” Again 
(p. 108) in stating the axiom of the “uniformity of the 
course of nature,’’ Mr. Hodgson distinguishes this from 
the former axiom of uniformity, by saying that the 
axiom of simple uniformity “‘envisages single percepts” 
while the axiom of the uniformity of the course of na- 
ture “envisages sequences of percepts.’ Yet the two 
differ not at all in nature and basis. “That wherever A 
is found, it will be followed or accompanied by the same 
thing B, as it was the first time — this also depends on 
the postulate of identity. For if A were followed by B 
yesterday, and by not-B today, there would have been 
some relation in which A stands now, which it did not 
stand in before; that is, A would not have been strictly 
the same A in the two cases. We should find that some 
respect had been omitted, in which what we now call A 
was different from what we then called A. But if no 
such difference exists, and yet the postulate is true, 
then A must be followed by B, both yesterday, and to- 
day, and whenever it occurs.” 

Thus, then, according to Mr. Hodgson, the axiom of 
uniformity, whether the uniformity means logical iden- 
tity of everything with itself, or regularity of sequence 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 237 


of consequent upon condition, always expresses the appli- 
cation of the logical postulates to the facts of experience. 
To think of the world as made up of things, is to think 
these things as united in fixed relations. To know the 
purpose of thought in thinking the axiom of uniformity 
is apparently the same as to know the whole purpose of 
thinking. For the axiom of uniformity rests upon and 
expresses the postulate of the identity of every thing 
with itself. 

This opinion of Mr. Hodgson’s is one that in various 
forms finds support in contemporary thought. In the 
current number of Mind I notice in Mr. Leslie Stephen’s 
review of Mr. Balfour’s Defence of Philosophic Doubt, an 
expression of opinion concerning the nature of the axiom 
of uniformity which seems very nearly identical with 
the view just set forth. 

Whether omitted or not, this theory as to the nature 
of the principle of uniformity is certainly ingenious. Let 
us study it. The axiom in question is here supposed, we 
have said, to apply to things, and to experience con- 
sidered as a succession of things presented in various re- 
lations, and under various conditions. The principle 
says that if the event A under certain conditions was 
followed by B, then under the same conditions A, if it 
recurred, would be again followed by B. A means an 
event identified as presenting a certain set of things, ml, 
m?, m?’—Jin certain definite relations at some one 
moment. B means a consequent event, similarly identi- 
fied. The complex m!, m?, m*— under the set of con- 
ditions c', c?, c? — is seen to be followed by the resultant 
complex denoted by B. The assertion is made, accord- 
ing to the principle of uniformity, that every recurrence 
of precisely the same complex of m!, m?, m? — under the 
same set of conditions c!, c2, c? — will of necessity be 


238 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


followed by the complex B. The question arises, how 
can this assertion be made sure? The answer of Mr. 
Hodgson and of those who agree with him seems to be, 
when you separate it from all the technical expressions 
of any system, essentially as follows. B having once 
followed must always follow A. For suppose that in- 
stead of the complex B there followed in a new case a 
different complex B'. Then, since in our first experience 
we meant by m!, m?, m*— and by the set of conditions 
cl, c?, c’ — (all of which made up A) precisely that set 
of things and conditions that was followed by B, and 
since, in brief, our definition of A was that it was the 
complex upon which B followed, and since in this sup- 
posed case B' and not B follows, therefore not A but 
something else, say the complex A!, must have preceded. 
Therefore, since A is A and not A!, upon A must always 
follow B and not B!. Necessary connection 1s believed, 
because the principle of identity is believed. 

Or, to take a concrete instance: If an ordinary man 1s 
stung by a viper he dies. This has been, we may sup- 
pose, tested in experience. Our assertion is that a man 
stung by a viper always will die, unless conditions are 
(as by the application of antidotes) essentially changed. 
Now comes the Paul of the legend in the Acts. He 
gathers a bundle of sticks; he lays them on the fire; and 
a viper comes out, fastening upon his hand. We are 
among the barbarians, and see the event. No visible 
antidotes are taken. The conditions under which death 
is usually found to follow are believed to be present. 
The man must die; he is a murderer, whom vengeance 
suffereth not to live. But we look a great while and see 
no harm come to him. We change our minds, and say 
that he is a god. Why so? Why did we not rather sus- 
pect the principle of uniformity? As barbarians we are 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 239 


not apt to be critical of the facts. Why are we not so 
much the more critical of our general principles? Is it 
merely an accident of the barbarous consciousness that 
we prefer to assume that a god may be shipwrecked and 
may have to make fires, instead of assuming that nature 
is not uniform, and that vipers may not always be 
deadly to men? No indeed, says our present mode of 
explanation. Not as barbarians, but as if they were 
philosophers, reasoning strictly according to the postu- 
late of identity do these men assume the extra~-human 
character of Paul. Man is to them a being that among 
many other essential qualities possesses this one, that of 
dying when stung by a viper. This quality is found to be 
absent in Paul, who is nevertheless seen to be moving at 
the time under ordinary human conditions. There 1s 
but one conclusion possible from the premises. Paul 
cannot be a man. The barbarians were poor observers, 
and doubtless ill acquainted with the nature of man. 
But they were good reasoners in this case; and their 
belief in the uniformity of nature was but an expres- 
sion of their belief in the identity of the concept “man” 
with itself. The whole was a syllogistic process of the 
form: 

All Pis M_ All men die when stung by vipers. 

No Sis M_ This being does not die, though stung. 

“.NoSisP_ ..This is no man. 
a good syllogism of the form Camestres of the second 
figure. 

But the obvious implication of the author of the Acts 
in writing the story is of the same nature. He wishes us 
to conclude, not that Paul was no man, but that he was 
under a miraculous care of Providence. The syllogism 
that the reader of the Acts will make if he believes the 
narrator 1s: 


240 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


No man under ordinary conditions escapes death be- 
ing stung by a viper. 

Paul escapes death although stung by a viper. 

*, Paul is no man under ordinary conditions; 

i.e. Paul is under miraculous care. 

In either case the assumption that like things under Hie 
conditions will yield like results, is but an application of 
the principle of identity. If what seemed to be a like 
thing under conditions assumed to be like does not 
yield the like result, we conclude that the seeming has 
deceived us, and that this is not the same thing. If, 
however, we assume the thing to be the same, then if 
the conditions appear to be the same and yet the result 
does not follow, we again conclude that the seeming is 
an illusion, and this time say that the conditions must 
have been different. In short, to quote Mr. Hodgson 
again (p. 152 of Vol. 11, PAzlosophy of Reflection), “The 
terms conditions and conditioned are relatives — that is 
the sum and substance of the axiom of uniformity, and 
it is a truth of inviolable necessity.” 

Such is the new effort to reduce the principle of causal 
nexus to the principle of identity. Mr. Hodgson seems 
desirous of distinguishing it from the old effort that 
Kant annihilated both elsewhere and in his famous 
answer to Eberhard (cf. Phil. of Reff., Vol. ii, p. 110). 
I have stated this new effort as I understand it (and 
who can be sure that he understands Mr. Hodgson’s PAi- 
losophy of Reflection when the book was published only 
two short years since?); and I have illustrated the doc- 
trine as familiarly as I could. Now I ask, is this account 
a good one? Is the principle of uniformity as thus 
stated one that accomplishes the true ends of thought in 
dealing with experience? My answer is that I cannot 
think that the stated principle does accomplish the 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 241 


ends of thought. By uniformity of nature we mean 
something more than the identity of everything with 
itself, or of every class of things with itself, or than the 
relativity of every condition to its consequences. 

The principle of uniformity, as Mr. Hodgson states it, 
means no more than this: Everything that is, is, and 
what was, has been, and what is to be, shall be. The 
principle is no more, so he himself admits, than is im- 
plied in the fact of attention, of arrest, as he calls it, 
i. e., of the conversion of the perceptual order into the 
conceptual (p. 138; pp. 160 sqq.). Existence is, to use 
his own illustration, a mosaic, over which a fly walks. 
Behind the fly is the past, before him the future. He 
knows not whether there will be or will not be entirely 
unforeseen experiences awaiting him on the part of the 
mosaic not yet passed over. But he may be sure of un1- 
formity, 7. ¢., of enduring qualities, at any one point of 
the mosaic. If looking forward “longitudinally,” as 
Mr. Hodgson says, all appears contingent, looking 
transversely, that is as the spectator to whom the whole 
mosaic is visible may be supposed to look, all is fixed 
and necessary. “Perception gives us what we after- 
wards call a flux of objects; the characteristic element 
in reasoning, which is expressed by the postulates, 
consists in arresting one portion of that flux, making it 
statical, treating it as a past, and then going (not for- 
wards from it) but backwards over it again. The ques- 
tion is no longer, what w2// be, but what has been. And 
this holds good whatever the duration of the arrested 
portion may be, a sudden flash, a half-second, an hour, 
a day, a year, a million years, the whole course of time 
— everything is what it 1s.” (Ibid., p. 135). According 
to this, as I understand it, the position of the reasoner 
is in so far like the position of the supposed spectator of 


242 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


the mosaic, as it is a position in which what to percep- 
tion was the flow of percepts, becomes the fixed world of 
concepts, wherein everything has a permanent and 
necessary relation to everything else. By uniformity of 
nature we mean no more than this enduring nature of 
the conceptual order. So at least I understand Mr. 
Hodgson to mean. 

So meagre must be my statement of this marvelously 
ingenious and suggestive doctrine that I feel ashamed 
to go on immediately with an effort to show it incom- 
plete. Yet in studying as I do here the purpose of 
thought, I must investigate whether and why any given 
statement is incapable of expressing the actual ends of 
our thinking. Do we seek in thought merely to arrest 
the stream of our percepts, to conceive the content of 
each as being such and such, to determine the abiding 
relations of this percept to all other percepts, and so to 
be able to sum up all with the statement: “/, being 4, 
has fixed relations to all adjacent and to ail remote facts, 
and is bound up with these relations, and can recur in 
the stream of consciousness only in so far forth as all its 
complicated relations recur?’”’ I say, is this process all 
we mean when we speak of the work of thought and of 
the belief in the uniformity of nature? Is this what the 
sciences mean by the uniformity of nature? — “Ah,” 
says some one, interrupting us, “but Mr. Hodgson him- 
self carefully distinguishes the scientific application of 
the principle of uniformity from the principle itself.” 
In fact, Mr. Hodgson does point out that in science 
there is an effort to anticipate particular recurrences, 
special regularities. This anticipation is something 
more than the axiom. Yet I think that he does not 
properly lay stress upon the fact that science seeks not 
merely to note actual past successions, but to predict, 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 243 


with a probability of some definite degree, future suc- 
cessions. And as Mr. Hodgson says, agreeing in this 
with Mr. Bain, with regard to the future recurrence of 
any particular sequence, we have “‘to risk it.” Such a 
case of future recurrence is not covered by the axiom of 
uniformity as he states the same. But is not every such 
case an application of the fundamental assumptions of 
science? Is not one of the ends of human thought the 
gaining of a persuasion that the future will resemble the 
past not merely in so far forth as it exemplifies the 
principle of identity, but in so far forth as the things 
and conditions of the future will grow in definite fashion 
out of the things and conditions of the past, so that the 
one may conceivably be calculated with exactness when 
the other is given and understood? This uniformity of 
necessary relation between the content of the part of 
the mosaic over which we have passed and the content 
of that part of the mosaic over which we have yet to 
pass; this likeness of pattern in future and in past: is not 
this what we want to find? Suppose that we have heard 
a part of some piece of music, say of a theme and vari- 
ations. We have distinguished in the perceptual order 
the theme-melody and its parts, and have, by our act 
of attention, transferred them to the conceptual order. 
Suppose further that at some point while we are listen- 
ing and while the melody is recurring, we ask ourselves in 
the midst of our attention: Whether or no, is this melody 
to be broken off suddenly when half finished, and the 
fragment to be followed by a snatch from a street-song? 
Now I do not ask, how 1s this question to be decided? 
Of course that will be determined by circumstances? I 
ask, what will be the significance of the question? We 
want to know whether the first half of the melody M, is 
to be followed by the latter half. Is it any answer to 


244 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


appeal to the axiom of identity and to say thus: “If the 
first half of what was before called M 1s followed not as 
before by the last half of M, but by a snatch of a street- 
song, then it is plain that this first half is not the first 
half of M at all, but something else; since the first half 
of a melody is as first half relative to the second half, and 
can only be the first half in case the second half fol- 
lows?” I say, would this account satisfy us? We want 
to know not the definition of the whole called M, but 
the probability of a disagreeable sensation. Yet I con- 
ceive that declaring the uniformity of the course of na- 
ture to be nothing but the great fact that a condition 
when viewed in relation to its consequent is only this 
particular condition in so far forth as it comes to have 
this particular consequent, I conceive, I say, that this 
account of the uniformity of nature fails as the appli- 
cation of the same principle to the case of the musical 
experience would fail. It leaves the one important ques- 
tion unanswered. This question is not: Can we regard 
existence past present and future as one vast mosaic, all 
of whose parts are in fixed relations? To that question. 
Mr. Hodgson gives a sufficiently exhaustive answer. 
The question is: Can we regard this mosaic as having 
such an uniformity of pattern that our guesses as to the 
whole can have a fair and definite probability, after we 
have noted certain recurring patterns in the parts? 
One more example: If we ask, will the theory of gravi- 
tation hold true tomorrow? Mr. Hodgson would doubt- 
less answer according to his doctrine of uniformity, 
“Yes: if the same matter continues to exist.” For 
matter that did not follow the present law of gravita- 
tion would not be, in the same sense of the term, matter 
at all. This is true indeed. Yet I do not see but that it 
leaves us just where we were before. We did not ask, 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 245 


how shall we be forced to alter our logical conceptions 
of matter in case in the perceptual order there is no 
more following of the old course of behavior? We asked, 
what estimate can we form of the probability that the 
old way of behaving will be followed by the old bodies, 
or if you like by the new bodies, tomorrow? According 
to Mr. Hodgson, none at all. We must content our- 
selves with the thought that pretty nearly everything 
in this world is perpetually in just that state in which it 
forever is. Then we declare that we have fixed the flux 
of percepts, and admire the eternal stability of the 
world of our thoughts. 

But, says an objector, poor as seems this result of 
philosophic analysis, it is the most we shall ever reach. 
No one can tell us why the future must resemble the 
past in any definite way. The task has been tried again 
and again. The failure has been in every case exemplary. 
At the end we must admit that we deal with a pure 
faith. Philosophy can analyze our notions of uniformity, 
but cannot justify them. Science, in so far as it is more 
than an application of the principles of identity, is a 
vast structure resting on a sublime and utterly ground- 
less because fundamental persuasion, the persuasion 
that the relations and the things of yesterday and today 
must be essentially like the things and the relations that 
will exist tomorrow. Nobody can justify, just as nobody 
can endanger the unreasoning persistent vitality of this 
boldest of beliefs. All other beliefs, even the wildest, 
hope in some way to found themselves upon this belief, 
or at least to be found in agreement with it. Itself, as 
the ground of all faith, has no foundation, and seeks no 
allies. Shall we call it probable? No, for what could be 
meant by a probability that the future as a whole, as a 
future, will resemble the past? Probability implies ex- 


246 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


istent and recognized conditions, of which some part are 
abiding and some changing. The combination of these 
then produces certain results, varying within limits. 
Within these limits every one of the results is said to be 
a probable one. How would this definition apply to the 
future and to its definite similarity with the present or 
past? To assume that the future must be like the past 
because the same conditions will continue into the fu- 
ture, is to beg the question in all too shameless a fashion. 
Let us be honest with ourselves, continues the objector, 
and admit that there is no way of saying that there is the 
least definite probability of the likeness between future 
and past, unless we are already willing to make assump- 
tions as to the future that include all that is meant by 
the probability to be proven. Recurrences in the past 
prove nothing whatever about the future simply because 
the future as such lies completely beyond experience. 
The nearness or the practical interest of a future event 
are not qualities that change the case at all. Be an 
event five seconds in advance or five hundred million 
years, so long as the event is future we can make no 
claim to know anything about it which does not include 
an enormous assumption. That we make the assump- 
tion is indubitable. Practically the assumption is indis- 
pensable. Logically there is not a particle of positive 
justification for it. Therefore, concludes the objector, 
let us not be wroth with Mr. Hodgson for failing to do 
what cannot be done. Let us leave the assumption to 
itself, as being far above any reflective justification, and 
let us return to the business of philosophical analysis. 
I have let the objector speak at length, because I 
recognize the force of the objection. In a cold but de- 
lightful style of exposition a contemporary writer, Mr. 


Balfour, in his Defence of Philosophic Doubt, has stated 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 247 


the sceptic’s case so as to make it once more the duty of 
everyone to notice the question who wishes to form a 
judgment upon the problems involved, in the spirit and 
with the caution of modern thought. Surely it is time 
that the old talk about the mathematical probability 
that the future (conceived in the ordinary way) will re- 
semble the past, a probability based solely upon the 
regularity of sequences in the past, should come to an 
end. Probability has a definite meaning only in case we 
make definite assumptions as to the conditions. The 
fallacy of separating such an event as the sunrise from 
all other natural phenomena, and of trying to calculate 
the probability of the continued occurrence of sun- 
rises while using as a basis only an assumed past num- 
ber of observed sunrises, is now quite well recognized 
(cf. Venn., Logic of Chance, second ed., p. 180; Wundt, 
Logik, Bd. I, Stuttgart, 1880, p. 394.sq.). Why should 
an attempt at estimating the mathematical probabil- 
ity of the general scientific assumption of the uni- 
formity of nature, be regarded as less fallacious? 
Assume the existence in the future of certain great 
higher laws and conditions, and the probability of par- 
ticular uniformities can in many cases be estimated. 
But what is this but first assuming the uniformity of all 
nature, in order that we may estimate in the special 
cases the special probability? Never do we escape from 
the fatal circle. We were discontented with Professor 
Schuppe’s account of uniformity, because it seemed not 
to express the aims of thought. Let us now admit that 
in trying to give a further account of these aims, we 
have reached a point where it seems that the aim of 
thought can only be expressed in an assumption alto- 
gether too sweeping to be regarded with perfect theo- 
retic satisfaction. Still are we driven onwards. What 


248 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


is the true and final aim of human thought in the as- 
sumption of the axiom of uniformity? Must we at last 
be driven to say, all that is valuable in human thinking 
rests on a baseless assumption that a perfectly irre- 
sponsible experience may at any moment belie? To be 
sure, even if it turns out that we must admit the fact, no 
grave practical consequences need be feared. But our 
theoretical interest in thinking would be in so far dis- 
appointed as the result spoken of would apparently be 
one of universal and hopeless philosophic scepticism. 
We should simply have to say, the fundamental assump- 
tion of thought about experience and the future, is an 
assumption conceivably untrue and of its nature abso- 
lutely beyond proof. Must this conclusion be accepted? 

We have studied the axiom of uniformity in two 
aspects, first as an expression of belief in the tendency 
of the sequences of experience to recur, and secondly as 
an expression of belief that the same thing under the 
same circumstances acts in the same way. In both 
these aspects we have found that the principle of uni- 
formity expresses an aim of thought that cannot be 
satisfied either by the axiom that all experience must as 
experience continue to resemble in some wise our past 
experience, or by the axiom that all things in so far 
forth as they continue to be the same things must bear 
the same relations to adjacent things. If experience 
must always remain experience, well and good; but we 
want to know whether the content of experience is not 
subject to practically unlimited change. If things are 
defined by their relations to other things, then identity 
implies likeness of relations to preceding and succeeding 
phenomena; but we want to know what chances there 
are of the persistence of the present order of things. The 
aim of thought seems so far too lofty for the means. 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 249 


The discrepancy is only to be made up by an arbitrary 
assumption. 

The axiom of uniformity was chosen by us at the out- 
set of this section because it appeared as a typical case 
of the way in which thought seeks to anticipate experi- 
ence. The same difficulties would have arisen as to any 
other of the axioms of experience. The axiom of count- 
ing, the geometrical axioms, any other like principles 
involve similar questions. Why is anything observed in 
the past necessarily to be anticipated in the future? 
Always comes the same answer: “We assume the agree- 
ments 

But pause a moment. There is one axiom that we 
have not yet considered at all. It seems not quite like 
the axiom of uniformity. Perhaps the aim of thought in 
assuming it is better in accordance with the limita- 
tions of thought than in the other cases. Perhaps we 
shall get some light here. This axiom is the well-known 
time-axiom, that facta cannot become infecta, that the 
past can never be undone. This asserts something of 
the whole future. In all coming time the inviolability of 
every moment will be secured as soon as the moment is 
past. Upon what does this axiom depend? “Upon the 
principle of identity” would be, as I suppose, the an- 
swer of Mr. Hodgson. I partly admit the statement. 
That the past can never return, is indeed a result of the 
fact that the past is the past. That the same quality of 
being irrevocable will accompany all future moments, 
arises from the nature of time. But why must we sup- 
pose time always to have the same nature? Because, if 
we conceived time as of such a nature that its moments 
were capable of return, we should be conceiving of it, 
not as time, but as space. This is true again. But now, 
to ask the fundamental question, why conceive of any 


250 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


future at all wherein the time-axiom will be verified? 
Why are we so certain that there will be a future? What 
is the end of thought in thus assuming that a future will 
come, and that the time-stream never ceases? Evi- 
dently we have here come to a final question which 
neither admits nor requires an answer. That there will 
be a future time is an assumption that cannot be based 
upon any other principle; but no sceptic can formulate 
any opposition to it. Try to assume a condition of 
things in which time has ceased, and you introduce a 
time-element into your assumed condition. Try to con- 
ceive an end of experience, and you conceive of your 
experience as continuing after it has ceased. Therefore, 
there will be a future, because at the present moment 
we actively torm for ourselves the picture or the notion 
of a future. The denying of the validity of this funda- 
mental act is the assumption of its validity. For if we 
try to think away a future, we shall have naught where- 
with to fill up the thought-place thus left vacant except 
a second future. 

Therefore, while it is perfectly certain that the present 
is not a future, and while it is perfectly certain that we 
are not in the tuture and that the future is not in our 
experience, yet it is equally certain that the conception 
of the future is an absolutely valid conception, and that 
in our anticipation of the coming of a future our experi- 
ence can never disappoint us. Here is an anticipation of 
experience which rests upon an assumption; yet an an- 
ticipation to which no sceptical opposition can possibly 
be formulated. What we mean by a tuture cannot fail of 
realization, even though we individuals cease to be. 
This is the first axiom in which so far in this discussion 
we have attained perfect confidence. 

Now in this axiom, which forms the basis of the time- 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT DET 


axiom and of all other anticipations of experience, and 
in fact of all expressible doubts as to anticipations of 
experience, an aim of thought immediately coincides 
with the means of realizing the aim. Thought aims at 
constructing a notion of a future. The fundamental 
assumption offers itself, and is instantly made, that the 
conception of a future is a valid conception. At the 
moment we aim to believe in a future we do believe in a 
future. The purpose and its fulfillment are inseparably 
joined. 

Here at last we have found a perfectly certain antici- 
pation of experience. What is meant by future is not an 
immediately given phenomenon but only a conception 
of a phenomenon and yet this conception is immediately 
known to be indubitable. Meaning and justification fall 
together. To say what a future means is to anticipate a 
future. Now if we have here an assumption whose valid- 
ity consists simply in the fact that it is at present made, 
can we not hope to reduce the axiom of uniformity and 
the other axioms to such a form that whatever is meant 
by them is justified in the moment when it is under- 
stood? Anticipation of experience will then be the same 
as the act of constructing the notion of experience. The 
aim of thought will be to construct for itself in a certain 
definite wise a conception of the past and future of expe- 
rience. Then experience will not appear as an independ- 
ent flux of phenomena, which thought follows without 
any true power to anticipate the content of the flux; 
but, on the contrary, whatever notions we have of past 
and future experience will be seen to be the construction 
of our own thought, working upon data immediately 
given in the present. So that what before seemed pure 
assumption, will now appear as the mere expression of 
the act of thought in constructing the very notion of the 


290) ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


past and future experience concerning which the assump- 
tion is made. 

I propose then to raise the question whether we can- 
not regard the notions we have of past and future experi- 
ence as solely the product of the present activity of 
thought working upon the data given in the present 
moment of consciousness. If we can so regard these 
notions, then the axiom of uniformity will be no baseless 
assumption as to a course of nature which is entirely 
independent of our thought, and which will come as it 
pleases; but the axiom will be the expression of the 
thought-activity as it actually exists, in its assumptions 
about an experience which is immediately given in 
present conception. Then if some one asks us, “‘how do 
you know that future experience will continue uniform?” 
we answer, “‘how do you know that there will be any 
future time at all?” If the answer to this is that the 
conception of future time involves the coming of.a fu- 
ture time, for that we define the future only by the con- 
ception we now have of it, so that the conception and 
the validity thereof are one and the same thing, then we 
shall once more retort that human thought in just the 
same way conceives of a future experience always as in 
some fixed relation to present experience. Since then 
human experience means what we now at this moment 
conceive to be human experience, this fundamental con- 
ception of human experience as of an uniform succession 
of phenomena can never be disappointed. Disappoint- 
ment of this thought-assumption can mean for us now 
only a failure to make the assumption. Yet we do make 
the assumption. Therefore by disappointment of our 
present fundamental notion of a future experience, we 
can mean nothing that we can now definitely realize. 
To realize to ourselves that our present assumption of 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 2.53 


the uniformity of experience should in future be disap- 
pointed, could only be to realize that our present defi- 
nition of future experience as being uniform is not what 
we mean by future experience. And this would involve 
a contradiction. 

This is the brief statement of the position which sug- 
gests itself as a possible solution of our difficulty. If this 
view turns out to agree with the actual aims of thought, 
then we have a solution of the great problem different 
from both the solutions above examined. Professor 
Schuppe and Mr. Hodgson, with those whose views we 
let them represent, seem to assume the time-flow, the 
future, the past, as if they were independent things-in- 
themselves, before whose manifold possibilities the 
present moment stands aghast, or ought to, daring only 
to make the mild assumption that throughout all, each 
event will be identical with itself, and that all events 
will belong to the series of conscious states. Since this 
mild assumption did not express the purpose of thought, 
we before were discontented with it. Now we advance 
the view, that past and future and the time-flow are all 
of them notions expressing something meant by a 
present thought-activity. They are projections, so to 
speak, of the present content of consciousness, by an 
act of thought whose nature must be judged from an 
immediate perception of its working. As such projec- 
tions or present constructions in consciousness, both the 
future and the past are and must be conceived as fol- 
lowing certain definite laws in their construction and ar- 
rangement of parts. The way in which we conceive of 
experience determines the nature of experience, because 
only of the experience of which we have some conception 
already formed, can we say anything as to whether or 
no it has or can have any given nature. 


254 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


The solution of our whole problem will then be at 
least indicated if we can be sure of the following propo- 
sition: That by future as by past we mean only certain no- 
tions we have, that are now and here formed by a present 
thought-activity dealing with present data of feeling. Then 
of course assertions as to the uniformity of nature be- 
come mere results of analysis. The course of nature is 
uniform because by the word nature we mean the com- 
plex of experience conceived in the present moment and 
viewed as uniform. The whole question then will re- 
duce to a simple question of fact. Do we conceive of 
nature as having a certain uniformity? Then nature has 
this uniformity. For by nature we mean what we con- 
ceive as nature. Do we conceive of the future as in defi- 
nite connection with the past? Then the future is in 
definite connection with the past. For by past and future 
we mean what we now conceive to be past and future. 
And so our anticipation of experience will become a con- 
struction of experience. 

This present topic leads us, then, irresistibly to the 
study of the next. 


Ill 


Tue Aim OF THOUGHT AS THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE 
CONCEPTION OF PossIBLE EXPERIENCE 


Here, as I maintain, is found and stated the true the- 
oretic goal of human thought. But some analysis is yet 
necessary. 

Whenever we try to reflect on the process of thought, 
whether to discover its content or to investigate its 
methods or to determine its aim, we always find our- 
selves dealing with a present thought. We can never 
directly know anything but a present thought. Of this 
we can study the aim, the quality, the subject-matter. 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 266 


Past and future, as past and future, are never immedi- 
ately given. This is a great fact of thought and of 
conscious life generally. 

Now shall we say that since past and future are not 
immediate data they must be concluded from the 
present content of consciousness? This is evidently 
meaningless. What indications shall be regarded as 
sufficient in the present moment to constitute proof that 
this present moment has been preceded and will be 
followed by other conscious moments? Evidently such 
a proof would depend upon at least a conception of past 
and of future. And as we have seen before, the concep- 
tion of past and future is the knowledge of the validity 
of this conception itself. To think of past and future is 
to believe that there has been some past and that there 
will be a future. 

If our general conception of a time-relation between a 
present moment and other moments of experience be 
valid of necessity, since all that is meant by the time- 
relation, is involved in the present conception of a time- 
relation, how is it with the conception of necessary 
sequence of the present experience from the past experi- 
ence? Evidently this conception carries its own valid- 
ity with it in so far as what we at this moment think as 
past is related to what we this moment think as present, 
in precisely the way in which we now think the one re- 
lated to the other. The same holds as to the relation of 
future to past. At this moment we project our world- 
picture into an ideal past and an ideal future. The 
present moment is the builder of both the branches of 
the conceived time-stream. The rest is pure analysis. 
Whatever necessary connection we see between the 
facts of this time-stream, is a necessary connection be- 
cause we see it as such. 


256 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


But, says the objector, all this leaves open no place 
for a difference between truth and error. If by past and 
future, and by the content of past and future one means 
only what is conceived as past and future and as the 
content thereof, then an error in prediction or in history 
is impossible. And with error disappears whatever is 
worth calling truth. 

The answer is again, what do we mean by a con- 
sciousness of error at any moment? We mean, first, 
that an expectation of experience, possessed by us in 
the past, has since been disappointed. All other logical 
meanings of the word error are derived, I apprehend, 
from this meaning. Now when have we the conscious- 
ness of error? When we have the expectation of the 
experience? No, indeed; the expectation is not a con- 
sciousness of its own failure. When then are we con- 
scious of failing? When the expected experience does 
not come? Not of necessity. At the moment of lacking 
the experience we do not feel conscious of failure unless 
we form a conception of the past expectation as a past 
expectation. When then? We feel, I reply, conscious 
of error when a present content of experience is found 
contrasting with and contradicting an expectation now 
conceived as past. That is, to be conscious of error we 
must refer the present to a past, and must conceive the 
present as not satisfying the demands of an ideal past. 
Now it is a fact, as I conceive, that we often do so regard 
our present contents of consciousness. We often are 
conscious of error. Hence this account does not banish 
the consciousness of error from the world, but only 
shows that in the consciousness of error, as in all other 
contents of present moments, we are noting the relation 
now given between a present experience and a conceived 
past or future experience. 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 257 


In like manner as the consciousness of error is posst- 
ble, is the fear of error also possible, in case we bring a 
present expectation into relation with a conceived fu- 
ture experience. And with the fear of error are also 
possible all the forms of definite doubt, of deliberate in- 
vestigation, and of cautious assertion. A cautious asser- 
tion expresses a coincidence not regarded as certain 
between a conceived future and a present expectation. 
This is possible in case the future is not definitely con- 
ceived, nor the expectation a very strong one. 

Now the developed critical or scientific consciousness 
always has this relation between the present moments 
and the past or future as conceived in the present: viz., 
that the conception of past or future is only completed 
and made quite definite in so far as relates to its general 
forms, not in so far as relates to its particular content. 
But the particular content of past and future when con- 

ceived at all, 1s conceived as definitely probable because 
determined Ahanithy by the general forms. The forms of 
past and future are conceived as necessary, the content 
as contingent but probable. Thus in stating the axiom 
of uniformity, I am not usually able to state that the 
relations of particular things tomorrow must certainly 
take any particular shape that I can designate. The 
axiom of uniformity is the conception that in the con- 
ceived past and future there are throughout realized 
certain fundamental and absolutely uniform sequences; 
such, for example, as the sequence expressed in the first 
law of motion. Now these sequences may not be con- 
ceived as known to me; but they are conceived as so 
certainly existent that I can say: “all that has been or 
that will be” (meaning the conceived content of the 
ideal past and future) “is throughout in necessary con- 
nection, is made up of causes and effects, joined in neces- 


258 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


sary union.” But as to the particular content which I 
conceive as filling past and future, this I conceive or 
picture, not as necessary, but as probable. In so far as 
I conceive myself to have attained a knowledge of the 
absolutely fundamental sequences in nature, I conceive 
my present knowledge as extending to a perfectly sure 
anticipation of particular past or future facts. In so far, 
however, as the particular facts are conceived as not 
contained in the general necessity of such uniform se- 
quences as I now know, I view them as probable, and 
their probability as definitely measurable in so far as I 
can conceive them as resulting from certain general 
causes affected by the action of numerous minor and 
changing causes. Both the necessity and the contin- 
gency are there and are real, because we now conceive 
them to be in the ideal past and future which we at the 
present moment construct for ourselves. 

Present moments may have many contents. Always 
however, there is a present feeling, organized in some 
form. If the present moment is filled with a thought, 
the organized feeling or notion is conceived as standing 
in some definite relation to an ideal past and future ex- 
perience. The relation that 1s conceived may then take 
many forms. The higher and more advanced our 
thought, the more are past and future conceived as 
wholes, as standing for one World, the more the whole 
conception of past and future becomes unified, and the 
more definite is found to be the relation of every fact to 
the whole conceived time-stream. Furthermore, the 
higher our thought rises in the scale of perfection, the 
less our conception of past and future appears as a mere 
expression of wish, desire, passion, prejudice, or other 
individual affection, the more does it appear as a purely 
theoretical conception, assumed in order that the 


ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 259 


thought of the present may have breadth, fullness, and 
unity, and in order that present acts may appear not as 
sufficient unto themselves, but as having an immeasur- 
able import in their relation to a whole universe. 

To sum up, from this point of view the end of thought 
appears to be: That experience past and future, should 
be conceived as one whole with a necessary connection 
of parts; that the present and immediately given content 
of consciousness should be found to be, not alone signifi- 
cant nor enough, but a moment in a world of life; that 
the relations conceived as necessary for one part of the 
time-stream should be conceived as necessary for the 
whole time-stream. And the end of thought is realized 
in the act of constructing the image of possible ex- 
perience. For by experience we mean, in addition to 
what is given, that which is conceived as past and fu- 
ture. 

As for the purely possible that is conceived neither as 
actually past nor as actually future, that is conceived 
only as a necessary sequence or corollary to the concep- 
tion of the past and future as such, and needs no special 
study. 

In this wise I would seek to give an account of the 
problem stated above. That this solution is a good and 
consistent one, I cannot be sure. For many obvious ob- 
jections an answer may be attempted at another time. 
A good deal of reflection has at all events convinced me 
that no study of thought is complete which does not 
treat the problems of thought in their teleological aspect, 
and which does not ask as to every thought assumption: 
What end does it accomplish? Taking the axiom of 
uniformity as such an assumption, I have studied it in 
the foregoing. And my answer is: The end of thought 
in assuming the axiom of uniformity is the construction 


260 ON PURPOSE IN THOUGHT 


of an ideal picture of a world of experience that shall be 
seen as One.' 


1 This argument as to the nature of our knowledge of fu- 
ture and past in some degree resembles the account given by 
Mr. Hodgson himself of the nature of our knowledge of past 
time. I refer to his answer to the doctrine that we need “‘in- 
tuitions”’ to enable us to be sure that memory has any trust- 
worthiness. I have only to remark that my own answer, the 
result of manifold suggestions derived from reading, is here 
substantially the same as in the thesis presented to the Johns 
Hopkins Faculty as a candidate for the Doctor’s Degree in 
the spring of 1878, before I had read, or begun to read, Mr. 
Hodgson’s discussion in the Philosophy of Reflection. For that 
reason only I have not made in the foregoing more special 
reference to views with which, perhaps, if I understood them 
better I might agree more perfectly. 


GEORGE ELIOT AS A RELIGIOUS 
DEAGHER 


[ 1881 ] 


HE great woman who lately died will no doubt 

be remembered in the next century chiefly as a 

literary artist, who knew mankind well, and held 
an almost perfect mirror up to nature whenever she 
chose to portray character. And in the minds of many 
it is an unimportant task to try to piece together from 
the writings of a great artist anything like a system of 
general philosophy, or even of ethics. Why should the 
words of those who spoke so well the rich flexible lan- 
guage of the living human soul be translated into the 
poor dry speech of metaphysics? If George Eliot, some 
one may say, ever lost sight of her vocation as artist, 
and, as in Daniel Deronda, filled pages with tedious dis- 
quisitions, why should we try to follow her in her wan- 
derings? Her best teachings are her great creations; and 
from a truly poetic product you may get inspiration, but 
you must not try to deduce a formula. 

Of course, we must not lose sight of the fact that a 
work of art is always far more than a theory, nor ignore 
the truth that artists do injustice to their art as soon 
as they begin to mix abstractions with their concrete 
creations. But we must also remember that not all art 
is alike remote from the world of thought. The man 
who writes an abstract account of the ethical teachings 
conveyed in the works of some musical composer may 
indeed keep within the bounds of reason, but he is at 
least in great danger of talking nonsense. But if one 
writes a commentary on the doctrines of the Book of 
Job, the fact that his subject is a work of art, and not 


262 GEORGE ELIOT 


merely a treatise, does not render his undertaking less 
appropriate. Poetry is not always, but yet very often, 
aptly to be named molten thought, thought freed from 
the chill of the mountain summits, its crystalline perfec- 
tion of logical form dissolved, no longer ice, but gathered 
into tumultuous streams that plunge down in musical 
song to the green fields and wide deserts of the world 
where men live, far below. He who follows a stream- 
course upward to the glaciers whence it has sprung 
leaves, indeed, behind him many of the fairest scenes of 
the lowlands, but he has the satisfaction of assisting at 
the birth of a river. Mists that have risen from the 
whole of that great world of the plains — from far be- 
yond, too, in the infinite ocean itself — have come up 
here to be frozen that they might, by melting again, 
produce this stream. To suppose that poetry 1s alto- 
gether thought is to see dead forms where one ought to 
see life; but to refuse altogether to look for the sources 
in thought whence the stream often comes, is to commit 
the mistake of the king of Burmah, and to deny that 
water can ever have been frozen. 

George Eliot, furthermore, was by nature quite as 
much a reflective as a poetical genius, and by training 
much less a poetical than a reflective writer. We should 
have supposed beforehand that she would never have 
produced other than “novels with a purpose.” Artist 
as she actually was, theory was constantly in her mind. 
The thought of her time governed her. She had occa- 
sional glimpses above and beyond it; but if she was 
Shakespearian in the portrayal of character, she was un- 
like Shakespeare in her regard for formulas, and no 
future century will ever be in doubt whether she was 
Protestant or Catholic. In fine, she certainly wished to 
teach men, and it is, therefore, our right and duty to 


AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 263 


attempt the not very arduous task of formulating and 
of tracing to their chief sources the teachings that she 
often but thinly veiled beneath the garment of fiction. 
In doing this we shall not study the loftiest or the most 
interesting aspect of her work, but our task will not be 
void of significance. 

Let us first sum up what little we as yet know about 
George Eliot’s growth as a thinker. We know that she 
was an unwearied student of science, of literature, of 
history, and of philosophy. We know that she sympa- 
thized in great measure with what is called modern posi- 
tivism. We know also, however, that she was well 
acquainted with the thoughts and beliefs of a class of 
English men and women, who know and care nothing 
about modern thought, but who have ideals that she 
never mentions with contempt, and that she in fact 
never wholly outgrew. All these elements went together 
to the making up of her doctrine of life. When her 
biography is written, we shall know more of their sepa- 
rate growth and of the fashion of their union. But even 
now, from the facts that are known, we may conjecture 
much, and the temptation to conjecture about so be- 
loved a teacher is irresistible. 

Marian Evans, according to the account of her early 
life published in the Pall Mall Gazette, grew up in an 
orthodox family, and in the Christian faith. With years 
she developed remarkable powers of reflection, and the 
first result of reflection was to make her a very strict 
Calvinist. The discomfort of this faith urged her to 
further thought. We do not yet know just what influ- 
ences made her a free-thinker. At all events, she never 
rested in the early crude delight of negation, but sought 
in all directions for more light. In 1850 we find her in 
London, already in the possession, so Mr. Herbert Spen- 


264 GEORGE ELIOT 


cer tells us, of the wide learning and many-sided thought 
that have since made her famous. She was now not far 
from thirty years of age. She had as yet made no at- 
tempts, at least in public, to write novels. She was 
simply a quiet and interesting literary woman, with ex- 
traordinary talents and acquirements. Acting under 
advice, she translated Strauss’s Leben Jesu, and Feuer- 
bach’s Essence of Christianity. She became the sub- 
editor of the Westminster Review, and buried a great deal 
of work in its brief quarterly notices of contemporary 
literature. Between 1854 and 1860 she also published 
several essays in the same review, whereof the titles 
have been given in a late number of the London A4cad- 
emy. ‘These essays all show rather the conscientious 
reviewer than the ambitious genius. Nothing but the 
style reminds you of Silas Marner or of Romola. One 
becomes almost angry in reading work that must have 
cost such a mind so much labor and that yet must of 
necessity have but a transient interest. Why wait here, 
one says, in this den of book-worms, O great teacher? 
Time is flying, the day is far spent, and the words thou 
art to speak to all the world are yet but voices in thy 
dreams. To thy task, before old age comes! Alas! they 
were well spent and yet ill spent years. Happy were 
the world if full of such workers. But yet unhappy the 
world in which such spirits are confined, even for only 
half their lives, to such tasks. George Eliot was nearly 
forty years of age when her first tales were published. 
But to understand the origin and nature of her later 
religious views, we must analyze as well as we are able 
the influences that during these years must have been 
forming our author’s creed. When a strong faith has 
left a man, he must do one of two things: either he must 
fly to the opposite extreme of pure and scornful negation, 


AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 265 


or he must try to find some way in which to save for him- 
self what was essential to the spirit of the old faith, 
while he rejects its accidental features, such as its ritual, 
its claim to give power over physical forces, its promises 
of material good fortune, or its asserted miracles. Now, 
George Eliot belonged too much to the nineteenth cen- 
tury to fall under the power of the purely negative tend- 
ency. She might be an unbeliever, but she never could 
be a scoffer; and so the search after the essential in the 
religious consciousness became for her a practical neces- 
sity. This search it was, without doubt, that led her to 
the translation of Strauss and of Feuerbach. To under- 
stand the effort that runs all through George Eliot’s 
life-work — the effort to find and to portray the re- 
ligious consciousness as it exists in men’s minds inde- 
pendently of the belief in supernatural agencies — we 
must glance at the views of these Germans whose 
thought she first transferred to English soil. They ex- 
pounded theories that she afterward sought to test by 
an appeal to living human experience. 

Let us speak first of Strauss and of the positive ele- 
ment in religion that this thinker, in the early Hegelian 
period when the first Leben Fesu was written, tried to 
separate from the supernatural elements of tradition. 
To understand this matter we must look back a little. 
German philosophy, ever since Lessing’s tract on the 
Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts, had been trying to 
discover the ultimate significance of religion, natural 
and revealed. Lessing himself, in the mentioned trac- 
tate, saw in revelation the process by which God taught 
the race from its infancy up. The doctrines of a revela- 
tion are, therefore, for him absolute truth, but not all 
the truth, and by the ignorant race, to whom they are at 
first revealed, they are only half understood, and, there- 


266 GEORGE ELIOT 


fore, often misunderstood. But the purpose of the rev- 
elation is not to reveal what is beyond all human insight. 
The purpose of revelation, like the purpose of individual 
education, is to hasten and make definite a process of 
development that could conceivably have gone on with- 
out external aid. “Revelation gives the race nothing 
that human reason, left to itself, would not attain; but 
it gave and gives to the race the weightiest of these 
things earlier than they would otherwise be attained”’ 
(Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts, § 4). Therefore, on 
the other hand, nothing in revelation is to be free from 
the investigations of reason; and the work of reason is to 
translate into the language of thought the figurative or 
obscure doctrines of revelation. In every such doctrine 
reason is to see not a stumbling-block, but a guide; and, 
on the other hand, not an incomprehensible mystery, 
but an intelligible truth, kindly revealed beforehand 
that we may know whither to direct our thought. That 
revelation is not all truth, or that it is dark truth, proves 
nothing against it, since all teachers give the pupil only 
what helps him to work for himself, and do not explain 
to him everything. On the other hand, the darkest 
truth is revealed that it may in time become clear to 
reason. Revelation is given to the end that man may 
outgrow it. There will come “the time of completion 
when man, however persuaded he is of a better future, 
will have no need to borrow of that future motives for 
his actions, since he will do good because it is good, not 
because arbitrary rewards are offered; for these rewards 
were but intended in the foretime to fix and strengthen 
his wavering sight to know the inner and better rewards 
of goodness. It will come, the time of the new Ever- 
lasting Gospel, promised even in the New Testament 
books” (Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts, §§ 85, 86). 


AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 267 


These thoughts of Lessing worked as a ferment in the 
great philosophic movement of subsequent years. Less- 
ing’s own point of view was forsaken for others, but his 
spirit dominates nearly all later German thought on this 
subject. Religion, according to one view, is the veiled 
utterance, the imperfect and poetical grasping of truth 
that can be and must be otherwise expressed and justi- 
fied. Religion is, therefore, the necessary path to the 
higher insight that 1s to come through philosophy. Or, 
on the other hand, as Schleiermacher has it, religion is 
an expression of a feeling, viz., of the sense of dependence, 
of finite incompleteness, of need of God. This sense, as 
pure feeling, is the essential element of religion, and the 
work of philosophical reflection is to find this essential 
element in all faith, to purify the religious sense from all 
disturbing doubt, and to prepare the soul to stand alone 
with God in the undisturbed enjoyment of the satisfac- 
tion of its greatest want. These two views — the one 
for which religion is largely theoretical in content, the 
expression of an intuitive, uncriticized, impure, or else 
poetically veiled knowledge; the other for which religion 
is the effort to express an emotion, a felt need of support, 
or of something to worship — both contend for the su- 
premacy in modern German religious philosophy. Both 
have in common, first, the effort to transcend the un- 
critical faith of unlearned piety, and, secondly, the dis- 
content, with the negations of pure rationalism. The 
two differ often very widely in the consequences that 
are drawn from them. 

Now Strauss, in the Leben esu, after applying criti- 
cism to the gospel histories, found their content to be 
throughout, as he held, mythical. His work completed, 
the question arose, What must we do with the faith 
whose support seems thus taken away? The answer was, 


268 GEORGE ELIOT 


Religion has not deserted us; only the perishable form in 
which our thought clothed itself has dissolved. The 
hidden inner sense 1s revealed more clearly when we see 
the mythical element in the popular faith. To deter- 
mine this inner sense of Christianity, Strauss had re- 
course to the doctrines of his master, Hegel, which he 
interpreted — not as Hegel would have done, but as at 
least one great tendency of the Hegelian philosophy 
suggested. From the point of view that Strauss adopts,! 
the religious consciousness appears as largely theoretic; 
viz., as in the intuitive knowledge of the infinite, the 
recognition in nature, in mind, in history, of the presence 
of an all pervading, all governing reason, of an absolute 
spirit in whom are all things. Not as a philosophic the- 
ory, but as a purely immediate sense or belief the re- 
ligious soul makes and accepts this doctrine. But if this 
is the essence of religious faith, it is not the whole of 
faith. Unphilosophic as the religious consciousness 1s, it 
necessarily embodies its faith in a mythical form. The 
direct consciousness of the infinite is expressed in the 
documents of the faith as if it were a particular historical 
revelation, occurring at some point of time. The pres- 
ence of the infinite reason in the universe is conceived as 
the action of a law-giver, working after the fashion of 
men. The progress of the race, or the growth of the re- 
ligious consciousness in the individual, is related as if it 
were a series of miracles. The eternal, in short, is con- 
ceived under the form of the transient, the infinite is 
mythically made to appear finite. So, again, in par- 
ticular with the Christian doctrines. The knowledge 
that the human spirit is in essence one with the divine 


1 VY. Pfleiderer, Religionsphilosophie, p. 238. Cf., the ac- 
count in Hausrath, D. F. Strauss u. d. Theologie Seiner Zeit, 
vol. 1, the chapter on the first Leben Fesu. 


AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 269 


spirit, that man is to rise to the actual sense of his unity 
with God, is veiled under the myth of a historical incar- 
nation. The understanding of the myth is the revealing 
of its essential content. We do not, reasons Strauss, lose 
the knowledge of the infinite, nor of our essential unity 
with it, when we learn the mythical nature of the re- 
ligious doctrine. This mythical form was an absolute 
necessity to train men for a knowledge of the truth. We 
must reject the shell of the dogma, but the kernel of the 
dogma is our eternal treasure. 

It is certain that George Eliot must have been influ- 
enced by these views. She looked everywhere for teach- 
ing, and we may be sure that she did not translate 
Strauss merely for the sake of disturbing her country- 
men’s faith. Of course, she did not accept the Hegelian 
metaphysic; but just as little 1s she in her novels willing 
to express perfect satisfaction with the flat negations of 
many of the English positivists. Nearer, in some re- 
spects, to her actual views, because less given to tran- 
scendent speculation than Strauss, may, perhaps, have 
been Feuerbach, whose Wesen des Christenthums she also 
translated. Feuerbach has, at present, little more than 
historical interest. What he has concluded as a conse- 
quence of his early Hegelianism others have said or 
thought independently of him. The following account 
depends upon that in Pfleiderer’s late work, Religions- 
philosophie auf Geschichtlicher Grundlage. Feuerbach’s 
view of religion is intensely skeptical, and yet not wholly 
unappreciative. He sees in religion the expression of a 
subjective want, which assumes the deceptive guise of 
knowledge. See through this disguise, and religion has 
no truth; and yet the disguise is not the one essential 
thing in religion, for the want creates the disguise. Man 
in religion treats his own being as if it were another. Dis- 


270 GEORGE ELIOT 


satisfied with a world that oppresses him, he creates in 
his despair a supernatural all-powerful being, enthroned 
over the world, and worships this ideal Self as the per- 
fect one. The ideal has no truth, but the indefinite vari- 
ety of its forms, the strength of the want that creates it, 
make its power over life prodigious. In the thought 
“there is a God, an image of Me, a perfect, an unlimited 
Self, outside of the sphere of change and misery”’ reli- 
gion begins. But this thought is not enough. God must 
be put in relation to the world. Only as God the Son, as 
God appealing to the human heart, knowing our frail- 
ties, sympathizing with our needs, hearing our prayers, 
does the infinite ideal become truly divine. And it is but 
an objectifying of the unhappy world-weary conscious- 
ness of disappointed humanity to conceive this God as 
himself suffering and overcoming suffering, as the risen 
and exalted Self, that has overcome the world. 

But in all this Feuerbach finds only a stupendous 
phantasm. He will admit nothing in religion as religion 
that can endure criticism. Yet see what after all will re- 
main to one who accepts Feuerbach’s premises, but re- 
gards this purely fantastic exercise of the religious spirit 
as after all intensely and eternally significant. Such a 
one will say, Men did indeed make to themselves ideals 
of God, and these ideals were phantasms; but the spirit 
of religion that produced the phantasm is still ours. We 
reject the product that made the world seem so sublime 
and significant, but we work as if we were in a world 
where such things were true. We know ourselves to be 
but strangers, who find in the whole real universe 
nothing that quite satisfies these our highest longings; 
but then, we can and will try to make the world as much 
as possible the realization of our longings. Ours it will 
be to give life a divine significance, even if no Providence 


AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 271 


has already done this for us before our birth. Did George 
Eliot draw this conclusion herself? We shall have reason 
to believe that she did. 

By training, then, as we may say, our author was at 
least in part identified with the great characteristic 
thought-movement of the first half of our century, with 
the movement that aimed at the understanding and ap- 
preciation of the essential elements of religion. This 
movement was not one of harmony, but of vigorous and 
often bitter discussion, and no original thinker would be 
apt to submit himself to the mere formulas of any one of 
its representatives. Yet in it all there was the one easily 
appreciated effort to decipher this strange, beautiful 
language of the pious heart, and to see whether the 
writing, once deciphered, would furnish any one word 
that the enlightened mind can accept as eternal truth. 
With this effort George Eliot was in deep sympathy. 

Another influence on George Eliot’s religious philos- 
ophy must be mentioned, but I see at present no good 
reason to lay much stress upon it. This is the influence 
of Comte and of his formulated Religion of Humanity. 
When some one of the most straitest sect of the religious 
positivists, who is at the same time acquainted with 
German thought, shall have made clear to us just what, 
if any, was Comte’s original and genuine contribution to 
the philosophy of religion, beyond his theory of the three 
stages of the human mind, we shall be able to appreciate 
the importance of a general sympathy with positivism 
for the mind of one who knew German religious philoso- 
phy so well. Till this information is given I do not see 
why George Eliot need have been much other than she 
was had Comte or his later period of thought never 
existed. She did, as we are told, sympathize with the 
Positivist sect. But of the ritual and the observances, 


shop GEORGE ELIOT 


the fanatical solemnity, and the pharisaical vanity of 
that sect, she certainly never in her printed works 
showed any signs. The religion of humanity she did 
profess, but she exhibits in her writings no tendency to 
accept the inhuman exclusiveness of any arbitrary dog- 
matic system of living. If the Positivists were her 
friends, we may be sure that freedom was a greater 
friend. 

But still another influence remains to be mentioned 
here, the influence of the study of Spinoza upon George 
Eliot’s life-theory. Oftthis influence we may be sure; for 
it has been announced since her death on good authority 
(in the Pall Mall Gazette) that a translation of the whole 
of the Ethics exists in manuscript, prepared by her own 
hand during this early period of apprenticeship. But 
just what the influence of Spinoza was it will be her biog- 
rapher’s duty to discover and tell us. Meanwhile there 
seems to be an inviting field open for philological investi- 
gation in the comparison of Spinoza’s famous treatise on 
the passions and their control (Ethics, books III-V), with 
George Eliot’s own numerous remarks on the same sub- 
ject. In reading this part of the Ethics one may notice 
the great likeness of many of the observations in style 
and in matter to George Eliot. This likeness ought to 
be examined and tested. Spinoza is, after all, one of the 
fathers of religious philosophy. His direct influence 
upon the first religious philosopher that ever wrote 
great novels would be a problem of no little interest. 

Leaving the study of the causes, let us go on to the 
effects. Not long before the publication of the Scenes 
from Clerical Life, we find in the Westminster Review an 
essay under the title, ““Worldliness and Other-worldli- 
ness: the Poet Young.” This essay is by George Eliot. 
The poet Young is here reviewed with a good deal of 


AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 273 


severity. The article has in it something of that dash 
and boldness in speaking of serious subjects that en- 
deared the Westminster of those days to the radical 
mind, and to young radicals in particular. But the 
hand is the hand of Marian Evans. Nor do we fail to 
find in passages her own more moderate tone, such as 
she used when not in the editorial chair. Young is 
described in this essay as “‘a poet whose imagination is 
alternately fired by the “Last Day,’ and by a creation of 
peers, who fluctuates between rhapsodic applause of 
King George and rhapsodic applause of Jehovah.” One 
of Young’s “most striking characteristics is,’ says the 
essayist, “his radical insincerity as a poetic artist. No 
writer whose rhetoric was checked by the slightest truth- 
ful intention could have said: 


An eye of awe and wonder let me roll, 
And roll forever. 


Furthermore, Young wants genuine emotion. “‘There 
is hardly a trace of human sympathy, of self-forgetful- 
ness in the joy or sorrow of a fellow-being”’ in all of the 
Night Thoughts outside of passages in “Philander,” 
“Narcissa,” and “Lucia.” As a consequence, Young’s 
theory of ethics lacks the element of sympathy, and finds 
a basis for morality only in the belief in an immorality of 
rewards and punishments. And here the personal views 
of the essayist burst forth: “ Fear of consequences is only 
one form of egoism which will hardly stand against half 
a dozen other forms of egoism bearing down upon it.... 
In proportion as a man would care less for the rights and 
the welfare of his fellow if he did not believe in a future 
life, in that proportion is he wanting in the genuine feel- 
ings of justice and benevolence, as the musician who 
would care less to play a sonata of Beethoven’s finely in 


274 GEORGE ELIOT 


solitude than in public, where he was to be paid for it, is 
wanting in genuine enthusiasm for music.” “Certain 
elements of virtue, . . . a delicate sense of our neighbor’s 
rights, an active participation in the joys and sorrows of 
our fellowmen, a magnanimous acceptance of privation 
or suffering for ourselves when it is the condition of good 
to others — in a word, the extension and intensification 
of our sympathetic nature — we think it of some im- 
portance to contend that they have no more direct rela- 
tion to the belief in a future state than the interchange 
of gases in the lungs has to the plurality of worlds. Nay, 
to us it 1s conceivable that in some minds the deep pa- 
thos lying in the thought of human mortality — that we 
are here for a little while and then vanish away, that this 
earthly life is all that is given to our beloved ones and 
to our many suffering fellowmen —lies nearer the foun- 
tains of moral emotion than the conception of extended 
existence.” The thought of mortality then is favorable 
to virtue as well as the thought of immortality. “Do 
writers of sermons and religious novels prefer that men 
should be vicious in order that there may be a more evi- 
dent political and social necessity for printed sermons 
and clerical fictions? Because learned gentlemen are 
theological, are we to have no more simple honesty and 
good-will? We can imagine that the proprietors of a 
patent water supply have a dread of common springs; 
but for our own part we think there cannot be too great 
a security against a lack of fresh water or of pure moral- 
ity. To us it is matter of unmixed rejoicing that this 
latter necessary of healthful life is independent of theo- 
logical ink, and that its evolution is insured by the inter- 
action of human souls as certainly as the evolution of 
science or of art, with which indeed it is but a twin ray, 
melting into them with undefinable limits.” The prin- 


AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 275 


cipal sources of our author’s quarrel with Young are 
thus indicated. But yet more to our present purpose are 
her criticisms on his conception of religion. ‘“‘ Young has 
no conception of religion as anything else than egoism 
turned heavenward; and he does not merely imply this 
— he insists on it.”’ ““He never changes his level so as to 
see beyond the horizon of mere selfishness.”’ And again: 
“He sees Virtue sitting on a mount serene, far above the 
mists and storms of earth. He sees Religion coming 
down from the skies, with this world in her left hand 
and the other world in her right. But we never find him 
dwelling on virtue or religion as it really exists — in the 
emotions of a man dressed in an ordinary coat, and 
seated by his fireside of an evening, with his hand resting 
on the head of his little daughter; in courageous effort 
for unselfish ends, in the internal triumph of justice and 
pity over personal resentment, in all the sublime self- 
renunciation and sweet charities which are found in the 
details of ordinary life.” At the end of the essay Young 
is contrasted with Cowper, much to the advantage of the 
latter. “In Young we have the type of that deficient 
human sympathy, that impiety toward the present and 
the visible, which flies for its motives, its sanctities, and 
its religion to the remote, the vague, and the unknown. 
In Cowper we have the type of that genuine love which 
cherishes things in proportion to their nearness, and 
feels its reverence grow in proportion to the intimacy of 
its knowledge.” ) 

The transition in mood is but slight from the last 
words of this essay to the Scenes from Clerical Life. As 
one reads these one is impressed with the fact that 
George Eliot has, for the time, resolutely turned away 
her mind from the learning and speculation with which 
she is so familiar, and has determined to seek the essen- 


276 GEORGE ELIOT 


tial elements of the higher life in the world of simple 
ignorance, doing. penance, as it were, for too much phi- 
losophy by refusing at present to portray a character 
capable of abstract thought, or perhaps, rather seeking 
rest from the heated war of ideas in a refreshing bath 
in the secluded, slowly flowing river of commonplace hu- 
man life. In the Scenes, artistic motives seem neverthe- 
less to be struggling still with didactic motives, and the 
author stops too often to justify herself for thus leaving 
cultivated life behind her. The born story-teller — such 
a man as Chaucer, or William Morris, or Paul Heyse, or 
Turgenieff, or Heinrich von Kleist—never, unless in the 
absence of the Muse, is guilty of excusing himself for 
having chosen a given subject, any more than the pop- 
ular ballad-maker of the Middle Ages thought of ex- 
plaining why just this tale of all tales must over his lips. 
In fact, the great curse of George Eliot’s art, from 4mos 
Barton to Daniel Deronda, is her tendency to speak in 
her own name to the reader for the sake of explaining 
why she does thus and so. But, apart from their artistic 
faults, the Scenes are full of suggestive thoughts. “These 
commonplace people,” she says (in an often quoted pas- 
sage in 4mos Barton, speaking of the mass of the English 
nation) — “many of them — bear a conscience, and 
have felt the sublime prompting to do the painful right; 
they have their unspoken sorrows and their sacred Joys; 
their hearts have perhaps gone out toward their first- 
born, and they have mourned over their irreclaimable 
dead. Nay, is there not a pathos in their very signifi- 
cance — in our comparison of their dim and narrow ex- 
istence with the glorious possibilities of that human 
nature which they share?” In the minds of these men, 
then, we are to find the religious life in its essence exem- 
plified, Here is simple human nature. A religious philos- 


AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 277 


ophy that would be universal must bear the test of find- 
ing whether these instances fall within the scope of its 
sounding universal premises. 

In Amos Barton we meet with a few suggestions bear- 
ing directly on this point. A story intended by the 
pathos of its unromantic events to appeal directly to our 
sense of the interest of life as life cannot go very deeply 
into problems. But the author does not avoid giving 
hints of her doctrines. Thus, for example, after telling 
of Mrs. Barton’s funeral, she speaks of our anguish, 
when we mourn over our own dead, at the thought that 
“we can never atone for the little reverence that we 
showed to that sacred human soul that lived so close to 
us, and was the divinest thing God had given us to 
know.” What, then, the reader asks, are we to worship 
those that stand or that have stood nearest us, and is 
this to be our religion? This, the author seems to say, is 
the religion death teaches. 

But one suspects all teachings that are founded on 
death alone. The emotions suggested by death, one 
might reply to George Eliot, are among the highest we 
know, and yet it is hard to draw any ethical conclusions 
from them. Quite apart from our beliefs or doubts about 
immortality, we say when a good man dies, “It is well, 
his work is nobly done”’; and when a bad man dies, “‘It 
is well, the world is rid of him.” If an old man dies, we 
say, “ The debt of nature is paid, let us not mourn”; if a 
young maiden, we still say, “Death has saved this fair 
life from pain and decay, let us cease mourning.” Sir 
Walter Raleigh, in the famous passage at the end of his 
history, calls death eloquent. One might well rejoin 
that death is rather the great sophist: argue as we will, 
he refutes us. He is an evil; but who would live always? 
a good; but who would forsake life? Death as the seem- 


278 GEORGE ELIOT 


ing end of desire appears at once undesirable, and yet 
perfectly satisfying; at once a sacred presence that sanc- 
tifies whatever it touches, so that we naturally worship 
the memory of the dead, and a horrible nightmare that 
pursues the living, so that the free man becomes free 
only when, as Spinoza said, he learns to think not at all 
of death, but solely of life. What doctrine shall then be 
founded on our contemplation of death? Death is the 
infinite night, wherein, as the rough-voiced adage had it, 
all cows are black. Let us disregard it, and ask our 
teacher what she has to tell us about life. What shall we 
worship in the world of the living? 

In “Janet’s Repentance,” the third of the Scenes, we 
are brought face to face with one of the problems that 
have most interest for the mind of George Eliot. It is 
the problem afterward treated in Romola. Suppose a 
soul, capable of higher life, but shut out for years from 
the thought of it, living in worldliness. Suppose a trouble 
that arouses in this soul a sense of wrong, of loneliness, 
of the desolation of the universe when there is no object 
in it that seems worth our striving. How shall such a 
soul become reconciled to life? How shall it attain re- 
ligious earnestness, and strength, and peace? Janet, a 
high-spirited, self-reliant girl, is persistently ill-treated 
by her husband. At first she cannot bear to think that 
their love should have all come to this. Then she takes 
refuge in sullen defiance, broken by passionate out- 
bursts. Now and then she upbraids her mother fiercely, 
and without reason; but most of the time she tries to 
keep silence. She never thinks of religious solace; her 
one hope is that in some way her husband may come to 
love her again. If he is jovial and good humored for a 
day, she is happy. But such times are rare. At last she 
falls into the habit of drinking secretly, to forget her 


AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 279 


troubles. And so bad becomes worse, until a climax is 
reached in her husband’s temper, and he turns her out 
of the house at midnight. She takes refuge with a neigh- 
bor. The next day her husband drinks enormously, 
drives alone, meets with a serious accident, and is 
brought home to his death-bed, raving in delirium 
tremens. Meanwhile, Janet has had time to review her 
life; her despair is complete; the world is dark, her con- 
science bad, her future inconceivable. At this point, the 
day of her husband’s fatal drive, she is visited by the 
new evangelical parson, a hardworking, somewhat fa- 
natical consumptive, who has the ascetic sincerity of a 
mediaeval saint. Remorse for a youthful crime had 
driven him into his present life; and his special task is 
the seeking out of great sinners and of despairing souls 
of all classes. Janet’s husband had been this man’s bit- 
terest enemy, and she herself had always before scorned 
his very name. Now, at the first sight of him, at the 
first experience of his earnestness and kindness, she feels 
that here is a new influence. She soon pours out to him 
her whole heartful of misery and of longing: “I thought 
that God was cruel, I suppose it 1s wicked to think so.... 
I feel as if there must be goodness and right above us, 
but I can’t see it; I can’t trust init. And I have gone on 
that way for years and years.... I shall always be doing 
wrong, and hating myself after; sinking lower and lower, 
and knowing that I am sinking. Oh, can you tell me of 
any way of getting strength? Have you ever known any 
one like me that got peace of mind and power to do 
right? Can you give me any comfort, any hope?” To 
answer to this appeal the parson gathers all his strength. 
He sees in this woman his own old despairing self. He 
speaks to her out of the fullness of an experience of tor- 
ture. He uses the conventional terms of orthodoxy, to be 


280 GEORGE ELIOT 


sure; but we feel, as we read, that the force is not in- 
tended by the author to be in them. Janet accepts the 
message; but why? Not because of the essential might 
of the orthodox formula. The devil is not cast out in the 
name of any power, but by the force of direct present 
sympathy. Janet feels that here is another, with like 
nature, tried, tempted, fallen also, but enabled to rise 
by seeing the vast world of human life about him in 
which there is so much to be done, in which there is such 
a mass of suffering and sin, to which his life is but a drop, 
and for which, as he sees, he must work. “As long,” he 
tells her, ‘as we live in rebellion against God, desiring to 
have our own will, seeking happiness in the things of 
this world, it is as if we shut ourselves up in a crowded, 
stifling room, where we breathe only poisoned air; but 
we have only to walk out under the infinite heavens, and 
we breathe the pure, free air that gives us health, and 
strength, and gladness. It is so with God’s spirit. As 
soon as we submit ourselves to his will, as soon as we 
desire to be united to him, and made pure and holy, it 
is as if the walls had fallen down.” This is language that 
men of a hundred nations and creeds might understand. 
Wherein lies its force? What is the religious idea at the 
bottom of it? Hear the author: 


Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another! 
Not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysteri- 
ous, effective, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny 
seed is quickened.... Ideas are often poor ghosts. Our sun- 
filled eyes cannot discern them; they pass athwart us in thin 
vapor, and cannot make themselves felt. But sometimes they 
are made flesh. They breathe upon us with warm breath; they 
touch us with soft, responsive hands; they look at us with sad, 
sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones; they are 
clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith, 
and its love. Then their presence is a power; then they shake 


AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 281 


us like a passion, and we are drawn after them with gentle 
compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame. 

Religious knowledge and life come to us then, our 
author teaches, through the influence of individual souls, 
whose sympathy and counsel awaken us to a new sense 
of the value of life, and to a new earnestness to work 
henceforth not for self, but for the Other than self. This 
Other, as you see, is always at least negatively infinite; 
it takes in this philosophy the place of the supernatural. 
You know not its boundaries. This grand ocean of life 
stretches out before you without discovered shore. You 
are brought to the strand. Will you embark? To em- 
bark and to lose yourself is religion; to wait on the shore 
is moral starvation. Such seems to be our author’s life- 
doctrine. The infinite is conceived as known only in this 
world of fellow-beings. 

For Janet this new insight means acceptance, and so 
new life. Her dying husband is to be nursed, and then 
afterward her neighbors are to be helped. Her religion 
sustains her. What, then, in her own consciousness, 1s 
this religion? A sense of the value and beauty of life, a 
trust in the parson, a wish to do good, a looking out into 
the world with trust and resignation. All must be well, 
for are we not willingly at work? So lambs think, no 
doubt, as they look up from the tender grass they are 
cropping. And of such kind, as it seems, George Eliot 
conceives to be the state of the soul when raised to the 
plane of this higher life. There is an indefinite sense of 
worship arising from the depths of a peaceful mind that 
feels at home in the world, and that, while so feeling, 
contemplates life. Call this worship by what name you 
will. 

But the process of the religious life is not yet fully 
described, for one of the hardest problems remains un- 


282 GEORGE ELIOT 


touched. Given the awakened soul, a Janet after her 
first conversation with the parson, a Romola when Sa- 
vonarola has sent her back to her husband and has called 
upon her to live for the Florentines even if she cannot 
live for her own home, such a soul, as we have seen, is 
largely under the influence of the person that has been 
the awakener. But this person is only a man, whose 
breath is in his nostrils. He may represent, but he is not 
humanity. He will die, or worse than that, he will show 
weakness or will betray some hidden sinful tendency. 
What, then, is to be done for the poor soul that has de- 
pended upon this mortal prop? Must the reclaimed fall 
whenever the helper stumbles? This problem is more 
fully developed in Romola. The heroine here is by na- 
ture enthusiastic, but by training a Neopagan, caring 
for none of these things. Aroused when in great trouble 
and despair to the value of the higher life through the 
words of Savonarola, Romola leans spiritually upon 
him, makes of him the human deity. What is the result? 
It is brought bitterly home to her that her spiritual 
father is not perfect, that he is selfish like other men, and 
can on occasion, misled by ambition, do her and others 
irreparable wrong. Thus the one support is taken away. 
There is nothing worth the trouble of life. What is 
Florence if its best man is such a man? Romola flees 
into the wilderness, caring not what becomes of her. 
Coming to the sea, she embarks alone, and the wind 
bears her to another shore, where she finds a plague- 
stricken village. The sight of suffering arouses the old 
fervor. As George Eliot remarks in substance elsewhere, 
in presence of pain you need no theories, you have but 
to work, and with the work the old faith comes back. 
The world needs me, and it is good to be needed. Such 
seems Romola’s thought; and so the faith in humanity, 


AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 283 


the sense that life is significant, is made independent of 
the trust in the one master who first opened her eyes. 
He may not be what he seemed or aspired to be; but the 
light is still there. 

The first teacher, the awakener, is therefore often 
necessary; but the awakened soul must learn to live 
without this personal presence, in the power of self-sus- 
tained enthusiasm. The very faults of the teacher are 
then seen in a new light, not as disheartening chasms in 
our way that cannot be overleaped, but as incitements 
to more earnest work. We are all weak, teachers as well 
as taught; so much the greater is the demand for un- 
wearied exertion. The process thus indicated reminds 
one of the well-known Platonic myths in the Phedrus 
and the Symposium. The idea of the beautiful, says 
Plato, is the only one of the eternal ideas that has an 
earthly representative directly appealing to the senses. 
At the sight of a beautiful being the soul is awakened 
from the dreamy life of nature, and a longing for the old 
home in the heavens is aroused. This longing is human 
love. Followed upward, love leads to the knowledge of 
the eternal, of which itself is the beginning. But because 
love is divine, it does not follow that the love of the one 
earthly object is enough. No; the object is nothing of 
itself. As a thing of sense it may not with safety be pur- 
sued or possessed. Only as pointing the soul to the 
eternal, only as arousing us to look beyond itself and to 
forget what is transient in it and in everything else, is 
the beloved object of true worth. Just so now in George 
Eliot the knowledge of the enduring and significant in 
life comes to us in the words and deeds of perhaps a 
single human teacher. But we must learn to outgrow 
the direct influence of the teacher, as Janet outgrows the 
need of her pastor, as Romola outgrows Savonarola, as 


284 GEORGE ELIOT 


Deronda learns to do without the prophetic voice of 
Mordecai, or as Gwendolen hopes to do without the per- 
sonal magnetism of Deronda. We must even learn, as 
Maggie learns, in The Mill on the Floss, to endure when 
everything forsakes us, and when there is no thought 
left but that we once did our duty and destroyed our 
earthly happiness. From the transient we must come to 
the knowledge of the abiding; from trusting in a teacher 
we must come to trust in the worth of the higher life. 
From revering the man we must come to revere the in- 
finity of consciousness whereof he was a representative. 

So much, then, for a brief account of the religious con- 
sciousness as a process. We come next to speak of this 
same consciousness as a present fact in the minds of all 
- earnest men and women, whether or no their life has 
risen or can rise to a very high conscious plane. Silas 
Marner, the weaver, crushed by early disappointment, 
loses all faith, almost forgets religion, and becomes a 
miser. His gold is stolen, but the child is found on his 
hearth, the little girl whose mother had been frozen in the 
snow. In bringing up this child the weaver learns to live 
again; she means for him his religion. Now again, with 
time, he becomes known to his fellowmen and awakened 
to the memory of what he was. Life as a problem rises 
before his unlearned mind, and with it the old puzzles of 
destiny. Why was it that I was thus tried and tortured? 
What did Providence, if there is any, mean with me? 
Hear, then, the weaver reasoning high with Dolly Win- 
throp, a village matron whose religion is a matter of 
faith only, and sometimes of wavering faith, too. “It 
al’ays,’’ she says, “comes into my head when I am sorry 
for folks, and feel as I can’t do a power to help ’em, not 
if I was to get up i’ the middle o’ the night — it comes 
into my head as Them above has got a deal tend’rer 


AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 285 


heart nor what I’ve got — for I can’t be any better nor 
Them as made me; and if anything looks hard to me, it’s 
because there’s things I don’t know on; and for the 
matter o’ that, there may be plenty o’ things I don’t 
know on, for it’s little as I know — that it is. And so, 
while I was thinking o’ that, you come into my mind, 
Master Marner, and it all came pouring in; if J felt 1’ my 
inside what was the right and just thing by you, isn’t 
there Them as was at the making on us and knows bet- 
ter and has a better will? And that’s all as ever I can be 
sure on, and everything else is a big puzzle to me when I 
think on it. For there was the fever come and took off 
them as were full-growed, and left the helpless children, 
and there’s the breaking 0’ limbs. . . . Eh, there’s 
trouble i’ this world, and there’s things as we can niver 
make out the rights on. And all as we’ve got to do is to 
trusten, Master Marner — to do the right thing as fur 
as we know, and to trusten. For if us as knows so little 
can see a bit o’ good and rights, we may be sure as 
there’s a good and rights bigger nor what we can know 
— I feel it 1’ my own inside as it must be so. And if you 
could but ha’ gone on trustening, Master Marner, you 
wouldn’t ha’ run away from your fellow-creatures, and 
been so lone.” 

“You're i’ the right,”’ is Marner’s answer. “There’s 
good i’ this world — I’ve a feeling o’ that now; and it 
makes a man feel as there’s a good more nor he can see, 
1’ spite o’ the trouble and the wickedness. The drawing 
0’ the lots is dark: but the child was sent to me: there’s 
dealings with us — there’s dealings.” Here then, is the 
elementary philosophy of religion, the knowledge that 
in all the obscurity and mystery of the universe the con- 
fidence in the supreme value of duty and of love remains 
tous. Dolly Winthrop in working for the suffering, Silas 


286 GEORGE ELIOT 


Marner in caressing the little girl’s golden hair, have 
they not both of them found a crude elementary religion, 
wherein there is nothing of sentimentality, but merely a 
plain, matter-of-fact, everyday recognition of the true 
object of life? One’s mind is borne by the strange con- 
trast of subjects to the words of Ernst Renan, in his 
London lecture on Marcus Aurelius: “The religion of 
Marcus Aurelius is the absolute religion, that which re- 
sults from the simple fact of a high moral consciousness 
brought face to face with the universe. The religion is of 
no race, nor of any country. No revolution, no change, 
no discovery will be able to change it.”’ Is not this, one 
asks, the religion of Dolly Winthrop as well as of the 
Roman emperor? 

But we cannot wait to give more examples. I have 
tried to show that George Eliot’s effort to express the 
religious consciousness in terms of natural, not of super- 
natural, facts is, in part, a sequence from the philosophi- 
cal movement of her age, the movement that began with 
Lessing and is not yet ended. But our investigation has 
led us to see certain peculiarities of George Eliot’s own 
mind and method in viewing these things. She was an 
appreciative student of many systems, but she let none 
of them rule her. She heard what they had to say, and 
then she went to actual human life to see whether the 
theory held good. In studying the life the theory was not 
permitted to interfere; unless, to be sure, we must make 
exception of the unhealthy predominance of analysis, of 
reflection, and of preconceived opinion over emotion 
and art in Daniel Deronda, or in some of those insuffer- 
able dissections of human weakness that fill the first 
part of Theophrastus Such. On the whole, we must see 
throughout in George Eliot’s works an intense earnest- 
ness, and a conscientious effort to comprehend the real- 


AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 287 


ities of the human heart. She feels what she tells, and 
to her the religious consciousness whereof she writes is a 
fact of her own heart. The sermons of Dinah in Adam 
Bede were, as she said in a private letter published since 
her death, written in hot tears, were the outcome of per- 
sonal experience, and not, as some have supposed, 
merely a cold study from observation. Thus in her 
writings the best power of analytic vision is joined with 
depth of emotion. She is, then, the best possible witness 
to her own doctrines. She has seen and felt what she 
describes as the true religious life. When Deronda says 
to Gwendolen, “The refuge you are needing from per- 
sonal trouble is the higher, the religious life, which holds 
an enthusiasm for something more than our own appe- 
tites and vanities,” he speaks less from his own ex- 
perience (for he has not yet had the interviews with 
Mordecai) than from the author’s experience. 

George Eliot never finished an abstract statement of 
doctrine, partly because she was at her best an artist, 
not a philosophic systematizer, and partly because she 
was too intensely skeptical to accept easily any one for- 
mula. In Theophrastus there is a chapter of conversation 
with an evolution philosopher on the probable practical 
consequences of indefinite progress, which shows how 
critical our author remained, to the very last, of even 
the most familiar doctrines of the school with which she 
was affiliated. And this skeptical element is one of the 
most significant features in her works. Nothing has 
done more harm in the history of religion than the dead 
formula, held to notwithstanding its failure as an ex- 
pression of life. And even the successful formula, the 
true expression of life, is dangerous as soon as we try to 
substitute it for the life, or to imagine that salvation can 
come through preaching alone. The destruction of the 


288 GEORGE ELIOT 


letter is the great purpose of skepticism. The skeptical 
spirit is the Mephistopheles of the religious conscious- 
ness, the companion that this Faust “no more can do 
without.’ And so we welcome the spirit that could look 
with the Germans for the abiding element in religious 
life, without cramping poetical freedom from the very 
beginning by an acceptance of some cut-and-dried sys- 
tem. If ever we havea religious philosophy, the poets on 
the one hand, the merciless skeptics on the other, will 
have helped the speculator at every step in his search 
for a theory. Without them speculation is a tale told by 
an idiot, full of sound and fury, yet signifying nothing. 
George Eliot is at once speculative, skeptical, and poetic. 
Whatever she has done best, depends upon the success- 
ful union of these three faculties. When the speculative 
tendency triumphs she becomes mystical and weari- 
some; when the skeptical triumphs she becomes weari- 
some and excessively analytic; while the poetical tend- 
ency may be said never, in her writings, to free itself, 
for more than a moment at a time, from the influence of 
the other tendencies. And so, the constant presence of 
self-criticism makes us more confident of whatever we 
find in our author in the way of positive result. 

And now, to leave the work of simple exposition, and 
to estimate our author’s accomplishment in the direc- 
tion of an understanding of religion, what is the one fact 
of human nature that is brought into prominence in all 
these particular instances? It is, as we may make sure 
upon reflection, the fact of the self-surrendering, of the 
submissive moment in the action of free human beings 
when they are brought face to face with the world of life. 
Man, especially the higher man, is not even by original 
nature altogether selfish. Before all training he is prone 
to submission whenever he meets another being whom 


AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 289 


he regards as higher, better, more admirable than him- 
self. Training makes definite and potent this original 
tendency. The soul into which has come the wealth of 
knowledge that springs from feeling ourselves to be but 
atoms in a great stream of life, is aroused to an essen- 
tially new existence. The main-spring of such a nature 
is conscious submission to the demands of the world of 
sentient existence. This motive needs no supernatural 
faith, but may express itself in the language of a hundred 
faiths. The spirit involved in it is neither optimism nor 
pessimism, but simply earnestness, determination to 
make the world significant. It is a fact, we see, that 
such consciousness is, and can be. Call this spirit what 
you will. A sound religious philosophy, such as Lessing 
dreamed of in Nathan, such as our century has been 
struggling to attain, will, we need not doubt, see in this 
spirit the essential element of that greatest of higher 
human agencies, Religion. 


NATURAL RIGHTS AND SPINOZA’S 
ESSAY ON LIBERTY! 


[ 1880 ] 


T is known that one of the earliest statements of the 

doctrines of religious and political toleration is to be 

found in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus of the 
great Jewish thinker Spinoza. Spinoza’s story has often 
been told, and the most important part of his thought is 
not contained in the Tractate. Yet we shall doubtless 
find a sufficient reward for our labor if we devote a little 
time to a study of this work in its connection with the 
author’s life and time. Originality in statement we can- 
not seek. The material facts are well known, and into 
the abstruse questions of the Spinoza philologists we 
shall not try to enter. 

The seventeenth century is noted in the history of po- 
litical and moral science as the age when a number of 
efforts were made, by men of no small ability, to con- 
struct philosophical theories of law and ethics on a purely 
rational basis, without reference to theology. The spec- 
ulative idea or principle on which these theories were 
founded was that of the so-called “Law of Nature.” 
The purpose of the authors was to determine the uni- 
versal and eternal elements in human institutions by 
means of an analysis of man’s character and place in the 
world. “‘Nature,’’ as was assumed, has made man with 
certain powers, desires, rights and duties. By intro- 
spection, or by some general study of human destiny, 
these “natural” characteristics may be discovered and 


1 Condensation of a lecture still extant on “Spinoza’s 
Theory of Religious Liberty in the State,” read before the 
Historico-Political Club, March 1, 1878. 


SPINOZA’S ESSAY ON LIBERTY 291 


formulated. Knowing these, we may possibly deduce 
with mathematical accuracy all the particular rules and 
conventions about rights and duties in so far as these 
rules are of enduring worth for humanity. The result of 
our investigation would be a complete code of “‘natu- 
ral” polity, embracing the features that ought to be 
found in every organized society, and so laying down 
the law to the law-givers themselves. 

This doctrine of “Natural Law” is now out of favor. 
Nevertheless many elements of it are still retained in 
our modern social doctrines and speculations. Its fault 
lay in the arbitrary and subjective character of its 
method. One wishes to find out the Law of Nature. 
What then is Nature? Do we mean by natural duties 
or rights or sentiments those that are in fact common to 
all men? Then our list will be limited to certain etht- 
cally unimportant qualities that do indeed distinguish 
men from beasts, but do not serve as guides to proper 
action. It is natural for all men to eat, but what is it 
natural for them to eat? Asa fact some eat oil and tal- 
low, others fruits and worms, and others bread and beef. 
Nature 1s here no guide unless we analyze her data very 
carefully. But do we mean by Nature those human 
tendencies only that are praiseworthy or generally use- 
ful? Then what is our criterion of praiseworthiness? Is 
this criterion to be found by a study of what men every- 
where regard as good? Then we shall be as we were be- 
fore, swamped in a stormy sea of conflicting traditions. 
Or are we to question our own minds for some intuitive 
test of excellence? Then in fact, our minds will prob- 
ably advise us in strict accordance with just the tradi- 
tions in which we happen to have been brought up. 

But these objections to the method of analysis as the 
seventeenth century philosophers practised it, do not 


292 NATURAL RIGHTS AND 


make their work of any less historical importance. Their 
theories were an important step forward. As speculative 
masterpieces they will always remain of interest. As 
expressing the revolt against ecclesiastical tradition 
they have made possible all that has been done in po- 
litical science since their day. And, for the rest, that 
word Nature has in our time by no means lost its power. 
The theory of evolution seems to give it new life and 
meaning. At all events the word suggests a very ancient 
puzzle. The Greeks first brought it into prominence, 
and they made the natural an ideal for conduct. Aris- 
totle elevated the term Nature to a well defined place in 
speculation; and the Stoics made Nature their god. The 
Neoplatonic philosophy, however, brought the natural 
into disrepute, and Medieval Christianity condemned 
it outright as a rival of the divine. With the Renascence 
the old concept revived; and in view of its fortunes ever 
since we might well call the idea of Nature the “ Wan- 
dering Jew” of Philosophy. Nobody knows precisely 
what it means; yet few thinkers can avoid it altogether. 
It is old, hoary, unhappy. The thinker has not yet 
arisen who can solve the problems it suggests; nor the 
day of judgment come when the wanderer can be sent 
to rest. 

It may help us in understanding Spinoza’s statement 
of the doctrine of natural right in its application to the 
questions of liberty and toleration, if we first summarize 
the doctrine upon the same point set forth by Hobbes, 
in the Leviathan, a work with which Spinoza may pos- 
sibly have been acquainted. The contrast between the 
two views will appear further on. 

For Hobbes, natural law has its basis in the fact of the 
complete and undiluted selfishness of the natural man. 
Because of this complete selfishness of human beings, 


SPINOZA’S ESSAY ON LIBERTY 293 


the state of nature is one of perpetual war. For men’s 
selfish interests are always apt to interfere with one an- 
other. Government being thus not an immediate result 
of the natural condition, must be the result of a social 
contract, whereby men have agreed to restrict their indi- 
vidual liberty for the sake of avoiding the perpetual 
warfare, and of thus better satisfying their own selfish- 
ness. In the original condition all were at war with all. 
If one alone grew weary and stopped, the others would 
kill him. You could not in such a case hope to correct 
men’s selfishness; for to try to change men would be to 
make a new appeal to their selfishness. The only way 
out would be a general agreement to submit the wills of 
all to the will of one sovereign. This once done, the 
business of the sovereign will be the enforcing of such 
laws as shall in the nature of things tend to check the 
outbreak of disorder and injustice. All other members 
of society must obey the sovereign. They will obey be- 
cause to resist would be to meet destruction. And such 
resistance would mean destruction because the resist- 
ance will be either unsuccessful, or successful. And in 
the first case punishment follows; while, in the second 
case, with the overthrow of the sovereign there would 
be a general return to the state of nature and the most 
destructive of all tyrannies, the universal warfare, 
would begin again. The sovereign may be the popular 
majority, or the majority in a legislative body, or a 
single man. The last mentioned way is the best, thinks 
Hobbes, because a single man best knows his own will, 
and takes the most immediate selfish interest in the suc- 
cess of his own government. The great danger is that 
we may have a weak or irresolute government; and 
legislative bodies are subject to bribery and instability. 
The sovereign will indeed be selfish, but, if a single per- 


294 NATURAL RIGHTS AND 


son, his selfishness will be enlisted in favor of society; 
since the welfare of the state is the glory of its ruler. 
The sovereign’s authority must be in all cases supreme 
and final. And thus through absolutism we may escape 
some of the calamities of selfishness. 

The doctrine of Hobbes is so lucidly and cogently 
stated, and so plausibly deduced from first principles, 
that in reading the Leviathan we are strongly tempted 
to overlook the author’s gloomy and severe view of 
human nature while enjoying the sober beauty and 
architectural elegance of his reasoning; insomuch that 
we at times almost wish this splendid myth more like 
the reality. For if it were the truth, political science 
would be comparable in exactness to mathematics. But 
in fact the view is as one-sided as the reasoning is rigid; 
while the idea of the world embodied in it is as dispirit- 
ing, not to say terrible, as the presentation is noble. 
Hobbes saw only one aspect of human nature. 

It is Spinoza who sees the other aspect. But before 
speaking especially of the Tractatus, let us glance hastily 
at the life and character of the author. Spinoza was by 
early training neither philosopher nor student of poli- 
tics, but a Hebrew scholar. In Rabbinical literature he 
found, perhaps, the most important of the suggestions 
that led him finally to the composition of the Tractatus.} 
Certain it is that the theological views set forth in this 
work belong to the first period of his independent 


1 In a series of monographs Joel, a specialist in Rabbinical 
literature, has tried to show that in very many of his philo- 
sophic views, and especially in the theological parts of the 
Tractatus Theolog. Pol., Spinoza is a pretty close follower of 
the rationalistic philosophers among the Jews, e. g., Maimon- 
ides and Gersonides. See the summary of Joel’s views in H. 
Ginsberg’s introduction to his edition of the Tractatus. But 
Joel has been contradicted. 


SPINOZA’S ESSAY ON LIBERTY 295 


thought, and that they are the ones that led to his ex- 
pulsion from the synagogue. But perhaps study of the 
philosophic commentators among his own people would 
have made him only a speculative rationalist; 1t was his 
life after he was cut off from Israel that made him the 
author of a more practical work on religious toleration 
and political freedom. For atter his own people had de- 
clared him accursed (as they did formally in the year 
1656 when he was twenty-four years of age) Spinoza 
lived much alone, always a keen observer of what went 
on in the world about him, always a good patriot and a 
great lover of mankind. One thing he saw during this 
unprejudiced study of the world, viz., that one of the 
saddest of things is the strife of religious sects. As he 
himself explains in the preface to the Tractatus Theo- 
logico-Politicus, he notices that the fundamental prin- 
ciples of virtue, such as charity and piety, were taught 
by all sects alike, and violated by all in their treatment 
of one another. And the cause for this singular agree- 
ment in diversity Spinoza found to be the tendency of 
the sects to lay stress not upon the really fundamental 
virtues, but upon certain peculiar doctrines that each 
claimed to have received from some obscure and super- 
natural source. This tendency resulted in the fashion of 
each sect to find in the Scriptures just what pleased it- 
self, and to accuse everyone else of spiritual blindness 
for not finding the same thing. Reflecting upon this 
matter, Spinoza was led to think that a strife so danger- 
ous to the public weltare might be rendered less violent 
if people could be brought to see, first that Scripture 
ought not to be interpreted in the ordinary manner of 
the sects, and then that no sect ought to be allowed to 
intrude its peculiar creed, as furnishing any rule for 
law-givers, into the affairs of government. In conse- 


296 NATURAL RIGHTS AND 


quence of these considerations, Spinoza projected a 
treatise in two parts, whereof the first should discuss 
the true nature of religion in its relation to morality, 
while the second should treat of the proper behavior of 
the state towards the various religious sects and to- 
wards individual expressions of faith. The outcome of 
the plan was the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. The 
first or theological part was the one that was based no 
doubt very largely upon our philosopher’s early Rab- 
binical studies. For the second part he was indebted to 
his later study of political philosophy,! in which he was 
at least somewhat influenced by the reading of Hobbes. 

In elegance of expression the clear-witted and learned 
Englishman far surpasses the profound and, perhaps, 
slightly uncouth Hebrew. ‘But in insight the political 
parts of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, brief as they 
are, outweigh the ingenious constructions of even the 
Leviathan. To Spinoza as to Hobbes, man is by nature 
a selfish animal. In Spinoza’s theory, as in the other, 
each being has an original right to all he can get. But 
while Hobbes has only the way of absolutism, whereby 
to escape from this labyrinth of individual desires, 
Spinoza finds that individual sacrifice is necessary and 
natural, not merely in case of the supreme act of the 
social contract, but in the whole conduct of life. For 
Spinoza selfishness is only the starting point. Because 
of the continual inner conflict of the selfish desires the 
wise man ultimately seeks to rise above desire and to be 


1 Hobbes’ Leviathan could not have been read by Spinoza, 
so say the scholars, before its appearance in Latin at Amster- 
dam in 1668 not long before the first publication of the Trac- 
tate. Cf. Ginsberg’s Introduction to the Trac. Theol.-Polit. 
Yet one need not suppose Spinoza to have been wholly de- 


pendent upon Hobbes for his knowledge of political philoso- 
phy. 


SPINOZA’S ESSAY ON LIBERTY 297 


free from self in the contemplation of enduring truth. 
Such is the doctrine of the Ethics, and of the Tractatus 
de Deo. On its political side this doctrine becomes one 
of a conservative republicanism; a belief that every 
man’s welfare is best helped by granting the greatest 
possible freedom of development to his neighbor, and 
that a certain degree of unselfishness is not only useful 
but natural to men. With Hobbes the State is the last 
desperate resort of war-weary savages; with Spinoza it 
is the expression of the higher consciousness of mankind. 
The truly useful State is therefore for Spinoza the one 
whose laws are founded on mutual charity, freedom and 
justice. If every man begins by desiring first of all his 
own preservation, every man must come in the end to 
desire his neighbor’s preservation quite as much as his 
own. 

As to the forms and duties of government, Spinoza 
holds with Hobbes that the first requisite is stability; 
but unlike Hobbes he prefers the republican form, since 
in it is best expressed and secured that mutual interest 
of man in man which, according to his view, govern- 
ment is chiefly to express. Hobbes had objected to the 
republican form of government that the people will 
quarrel, and that they will be at the mercy of dema- 
gogues. Spinoza finds that the people will know best 
what satisfies them, and that the majority will be trained 
into such respect for the minority as not to make im- 
moderate laws. Like Hobbes again, however, Spinoza 
holds that revolutions are injurious; and that the form 
of the government should not be changed, as had been 
attempted in the English Rebellion. But Hobbes gave 
as a reason the necessary return to a state of nature 
which would result from revolution in the common- 
wealth. Spinoza appeals merely to the fact that men’s 


298 NATURAL RIGHTS AND 


habits are not easily changed; and regards the form of 
government as a habit of the public mind. 

In particular, Hobbes had held that the sovereign can 
make the most arbitrary decisions as to special laws, 
religion and the forms of social life. Spinoza maintains 
that a government which does not recognize the wishes 
of the public it governs is in the highest degree danger- 
ous, both to its own interests and to the general peace. 
It must use force indeed, but only in cases where this 
force can be employed in the name of the mass of the 
people. Theoretically, the government is the fountain 
of all law, and can, therefore, change every law at pleas- 
ure. Practically it is to make and change laws only for 
the promotion of peace and harmony. Theoretically it 
has complete right over the person and property of the 
subject; but practically it has not a particle of control 
over the thoughts of the subject, and so must respect 
these thoughts. For if the subjects do not think favor- 
ably of the government, the government will not long 
exist to maintain its rights, theoretical or practical. In 
a single sentence the sum of the whole is: It is not the 
ultimate purpose of government to rule, nor to put men 
under the restraint of fear, nor to subject them to ex- 
ternal authority; but on the contrary to free everyone 
from fear, and to secure him his life, his natural right to 
existence, and that apart from any hurt to himself or to 
another. This is the sum of the whole, I say, as given by 
Spinoza himself, and there is something of a truly fas- 
cinating boldness in the way he utters his final paradox, 
Jinem reipublicae non esse dominari. Why, what, we ask 
then, may be the use of sovereignty if not to hold the 
mastery over the subject? What indeed, retorts Spin- 
oza, unless to give the subject liberty? 

Such are the outlines of Spinoza’s theory of political 


SPINOZA’S ESSAY ON LIBERTY 299 


liberty. How he applies these principles to the case of 
religion we cannot expound at length, because the the- 
ological discussions of the Tractatus are beyond our 
present scope. It 1s enough to say that Spinoza tries to 
show that there is in Scripture only this element of 
authoritative and divine doctrine, v7z., the teaching 
that there is a power rewarding in some way virtue, and 
punishing in some way vice. Any sect recognizing these 
doctrines is to be tolerated, and must in turn tolerate 
others. And in consequence the State ought never to 
restrict the liberty of the subject to think about all 
religious questions whatever he chooses, and to say 
what he thinks. 

To sum up, Spinoza’s Tractate is an example of the 
highest results that could be reached in political philos- 
ophy by those who based their theories on the abstract 
assumptions about Nature and Right that were current 
in the seventeenth century. In his views about tolera- 
tion, liberty, and the functions of government, he an- 
ticlpates ideas now often regarded as axiomatic, but 
then so far ahead of the times that even in the free 
Dutch Republic the book was condemned by authority, 
while its author did not during his life time dare to 
undertake or to permit a translation of it into the vul- 
gar tongue. And the theological speculations of the 
work anticipate much of the later efforts of scholars to 
bring about an historical understanding of the Hebrew 
Literature. On the whole, neither the great author him- 
self, nor this the most immediately practical of his 
books ought in our studies to be neglected. 


THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS! 
[1881 ] 


VERY animal, when not frightened, shows in its 
H own way a certain quiet self-complacency, a con- 

fidence in the supreme worth of its individual 
existence, an exalted egotism, which is often not a little 
amusing if we reflect on the shortness, the insignificance, 
and the misery of most creatures’ lives. This animal 
self-complacency characterizes, also, as we know, all 
naturally-minded men. We know, too, that most men 
are nearly as much in error as the beasts, in the degree 
of importance that they attach to their lives. But what 
I have just now most in mind is that the same kind of 
blunder is frequently found in the judgment that any 
one age passes upon itself and its own work. Every 
active period of history thinks its activity of prodigious 
importance, and its advance beyond its predecessors 
very admirable. So the eighteenth century thought that 
the English poetry of past times had been tar surpassed 
in form and in matter by the poetry of the age of Dryden 
and of Pope. Long since the blindness of the eighteenth 
century upon this point has been fully exposed. The 
Neoplatonic philosophy, the Crusades, the First French 
Empire, are tamiliar instances from the multitudes of 
cases where men utterly failed to perform the perma- 
nent work which they were very earnestly trying to do, 
and where they were, at most, doing for the world that. 
which they least of all wished or expected to do. Like 
individuals, then, whole eras of history go by, sublimely 
confident in their own significance, yet often unable to 


1 There exists among the author’s MSS. a revised and en- 
larged version of this essay, but in unfinished form. — Ed. 


THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 301 


make their claims even interesting in the sight of pos- 
terity. 

The same lesson may be drawn both here and in the 
case of individuals. The man is vain; so is the age. The 
man ought to correct his vanity first by negative criti- 
cism; so ought the time. But the disillusioning process 
is a cruel one in both cases. It is hard tor the man to 
bear the thought that, perhaps, after all, he is a useless 
enthusiast. So it is hard for an age to bear the thought 
that its dearest worship may be only idolatry, and its 
best work only a fighting of shadows. But for both the 
lesson is the same. Let them find some higher aim than 
this merely natural one of self-satisfaction. Let their 
work be done, not that it may seem grand to them alone, 
but so that it must have an element of grandeur in it, 
whatever be the success of its particular purposes. 
Grandeur does not depend upon success alone, nor need 
illusions always be devoid of a higher truth. The prob- 
lem is to find out what is the right spirit, and to work in 
that. If the matter of the work is bad, that must perish, 
but the spirit need not. 

Now, in our age we are especially engaged upon cer- 
tain problems of thought. We discuss the origin of the 
present forms of things in the physical and in the moral 
universe. Evolution is our watchword; “everything 
grew,” is the interpretation. Our method of inquiry is 
the historical. We want to see how, out of certain simple 
elements, the most complex structures about us were 
built up. Now, in the enormous thought-activity thus 
involved, two things especially strike one who pauses to 
watch. The first is, that in studying Evolution men 
have come to neglect other important matters that used 
to be a good deal talked about. The true end of life, the 
nature and grounds of human certitude, the problems 


302 THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 


of Goethe’s Faust and of Kant’s Critique — these disap- 
pear from the view of many representative men. The 
age finds room to talk about these things, but not to 
enter upon them with a whole-souled enthusiasm. Yet 
these are eternally valuable matters of thought. The 
age for which they are not in the very front rank of 
problems is a one-sided age, destined to be severely 
criticized within a century. The other fact that strikes 
us in this age is that the result of our one-sidedness is an 
unhappy division, productive of no little misery, be- 
tween the demands of modern thought and the demands 
of the whole indivisible nature of man. The ethical 
finds not enough room in the philosophy of the time. 
The world is studied, but not the active human will, 
without whose interference the world is wholly void of 
human significance. The matter of thinking over- 
whelms us; we forget to study the form, and so we ac- 
cept, with a blank wonder, the results of our thinking as 
if they were self-existent entities that had walked into 
our souls of themselves. For example, we make mole- 
cules by reasoning about facts of sensation, and by 
grouping these facts in the simplest and easiest fashion 
possible; then we fall into a fear lest the molecules have, 
atter all, made us, and we write countless volumes on a 
stupid theme called materialism. This unreflective 
fashion of regarding the products of our thought as the 
conditions and source of our thought, is largely respon- 
sible for the strife between the ethical and the scientific 
tendencies of the time. The scientific tendency stops in 
one direction at a certain point, content with having 
made a theory of evolution, and fearing, or, at any rate, 
neglecting, any further analysis of fundamental ideas. 
The ethical tendency, on the other hand, rests on a 
rooted feeling that, after all, conscious life is of more 


THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 303 


worth than anything else in the universe. But this is, 
nowadays, commonly a mere feeling, which, finding 
nothing to justify it in current scientific opinion, be- 
comes morose, and results in books against science. The 
books are wrong, but the feeling, when not morose, is 
right. The world is of importance only because of the 
conscious life in it, and the Evolution theory is one- 
sided because of the subordinate place it gives to con- 
sciousness. But the cure is not in writing books against 
science, but solely in such a broad philosophy as shall 
correct the narrowness of the day, and bring back to the 
first rank of interest once more the problems of Goethe’s 
Faust and of Kant’s Critique. We want not less talk 
about evolution, but more study of human life and des- 
tiny, of the nature of men’s thought, and the true goal of 
men’s actions. Send us the thinker that can show us 
just what in life is most worthy of our toil, just what 
makes men’s destiny more than poor and comic, just 
what is the ideal that we ought to serve; let such a 
thinker point out to us plainly that ideal, and then say, 
in a voice that we must hear, “Work, work for that; it 
is the highest’’ — then such a thinker will have saved 
our age from one-sidedness, and have given it eternal 
significance. Now, to talk about those problems of 
thought which concern the destiny, the significance, and 
the conduct of human life, is to talk about what I have 
termed “the ethical aspect of thought.” Some study 
we must give to these things if we are not to remain, 
once for all, hopelessly one-sided. 

In looking for the view of the world which shall restore 
unity to our divided age, we must first not forget the 
fact that very lately all these nowneglected matters have 
been much talked about. It is the theory of Evolution 
that, with its magnificent triumphs, its wonderful in- 


304 THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 


genuity and insight, has put them out of sight. Only 
within twenty years has there been a general inattention 
to the study of the purposes and the hopes of human 
life — a study that, embodied in German Idealism, or in 
American Transcendentalism, in Goethe, in Schiller, in 
Fichte, in Wordsworth, in Shelley, in Carlyle, in Emer- 
son, had been filling men’s thoughts since the outset of 
the great Revolution. But since the end of the period 
referred to our knowledge of the origin of the forms of 
life-has driven from popular thought the matters of the 
worth and of the conduct of life, so that one might grow 
up nowadays well taught in the learning of the age, and 
when asked, “Hast thou as yet received into thy heart 
any Ideal?”’ might respond very truthfully, “I have not 
heard so much as whether there be any Ideal.” 

Yet, I repeat, the fault in our time is negative rather 
than positive. We have to enlarge, not to condemn. 
Evolution is a great truth, but it is not all truth. We 
need more, not less, of science. We need a more thor- 
ough-going, a more searching — yes, a more critical and 
skeptical — thought than any now current. For current 
thought is, in fact, zaif and dogmatic, accepting without 
criticism a whole army of ideas because they happen to 
be useful as bases for scientific work. We need, then, in 
the interests of higher thought, an addition to our pres- 
ent philosophy — an addition that makes use of the 
neglected thought of the last three generations. But 
as preliminary to all this, it becomes us to inquire: Why 
was modern thought so suddenly turned from the con- 
templation of the ethical aspect of reality to this present 
absorbing study of the material side of the world? How 
came we to break with Transcendentalism, and to begin 
this search. after the laws of the redistribution of matter 
and of force? To this question I want to devote the rest 


THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 305 


of the present study; for just here is the whole problem 
ina nut shell. Transcendentalism, the distinctly ethical 
thought-movement of the century, failed to keep a 
strong hold on the life of the century. Why? In the 
answer to this question lies at once the relative justifica- 
tion, and at the same time the understanding, of the in- 
completeness of our present mode of thinking. 

By Transcendentalism, I mean a movement that be- 
gan in Germany in the last thirty years of the eighteenth 
century, and that afterward spread, in one form or an- 
other, all over Europe, and even into our own country 
— a movement that answered in the moral and mental 
world to the French Revolution in the political world. 
Everywhere this movement expressed, through a multi- 
tude of forms, a single great idea: the idea that in the 
free growth and expression of the highest and strongest 
emotions of the civilized man might be found the true 
solution of the problem of life. Herein was embodied a 
reaction against the characteristic notions of the eight- 
eenth century. In the conventional, in submission to the 
external forms of government, religion, and society, 
joined with a total indifference to the spiritual, and 
with a general tendency to free but shallow speculation, 
the average popular thought of the last century had 
sought to attain repose, rather than perfection. The 
great thinkers rose far above this level; but, on the 
whole, we look to the age of the rationalists rather for 
ingenuity than for profundity, rather for good sense 
than for grand ideas. The prophetic, the emotional, the 
sublime, are absent from the typical eighteenth century 
mind-life. Instead, we find cultivation, criticism, skep- 
ticism, and at times, as a sort of relief, a mild sentimen- 
tality. The Transcendental movement expressed a 
rebound from this state of things. With the so-called 


306 THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 


Storm and Stress Period of German literature the pro-- 
test against conventionality and in favor of a higher life 
began. Love, enthusiasm, devotion, the affection for 
humanity, the search after the ideal, the faith in a spir- 
itual life — these became objects of the first interest. 
A grand new era of history seemed opening. Men felt 
themselves on the verge of great discoveries. The high- 
est hopes were formed. A movement was begun that 
lasted through three generations, and far into a fourth. 
It was, to be sure, in nature a young men’s movement; 
but as the men of one generation lost their early enthu- 
siasm, others arose to follow in their footsteps — blun- 
deringly, perhaps, but earnestly. When Goethe had 
outgrown his youthtul extravagances, behold there were 
the young Romanticists to undertake the old work once 
more. When they crystallized with time, and lost hold 
on the German national life, there came Heine and the 
Young Germany to pursue with new vigor the old path. 
In England, Wordsworth grows very sober with age, 
when there come Byron and Shelley; Coleridge tails, and 
Carlyle is sent; Shelley and Bryon pass away, but Ten- 
nyson arises. And with us in America Emerson and his 
helpers renew the spirit of a half century before their 
time. This movement now seems a thing of the past. 
There is no Emerson among the younger men, no Tenny- 
son among the new school of poets, no Heine in Germany 
— much less, then, a Fichte or a Schiller. Not merely is 
genius lacking, but the general public interest, the soil 
from which a genius draws nourishment, is unfavorable. 
The literary taste of the age is represented by George 
Eliot’s later novels, where everything is made subordi- 
nate to analysis, by the poetry of several skillful masters 
of melody, by the cold critical work of the authors of the 
series on “English Men of Letters.”” Men of wonderful 


THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 307 


power there are among our writers — men like William 
Morris in poetry, or Matthew Arnold in both criticism 
and poetry; but their work is chiefly esoteric, appealing 
to a limited class. Widely popular writers we have upon 
many subjects; but they are either great men of abstract 
thought, like Spencer and Huxley; or else, alas! mere 
superficial scribblers like Mr. Mallock, or rhetoricians 
like Rev. Joseph Cook. The moral leader, the seer, the 
man to awaken deep interest in human life as human life, 
no longer belongs to the active soldiers of the army of 
today; and, what is worse, the public mind no longer in- 
quires after such a leader. There must surely be a cause 
for this state of public sentiment. Neglect of such vital 
questions must have sprung from some error in their 
treatment. Let us look in history for that error. 

The Storm and Stress Period in Germany began with 
the simplest and most unaffected desire possible to get 
back from conventionality and from shallow thought to 
the purity and richness of natural emotion. There was 
at first no set philosophy or creed about the universe 
common to those engaged in the movement. The young 
poets worshipped genius, and desired to feel intensely 
and to express emotion worthily. To this end they dis- 
carded the traditions as to form which they found em- 
bodied in French poetry and in learned textbooks. 
Lessing had furnished them critical authority. He had 
shown the need of appealing to Nature for instruction, 
both in the matter and in the manner of poetry. Popular 
ballads suggested to some of the young school their 
models. Their own overflowing hearts, their warm, ideal 
friendships with one another, their passion for freedom, 
their full personal experiences, gave them material. To- 
gether they broke down conventions, and opened a new 
era in literary life, as the French Revolution, twenty 


308 THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 


years later, did in national life. Every one knows that 
Goethe’s famous Werther is the result of this time of fer- 
ment. Now, if one reads Werther attentively, and with 
an effort (for it needs an effort) to sympathize with the 
mood that produced and enjoyed it, one will see in it the 
characteristic idea that the aim of life is to have as re- 
markable and exalted emotional experiences as possible, 
and those of a purely personal character; that is, not the 
emotion that men feel in common when they engage in 
great causes, not the devotion to sublime impersonal 
objects, not surrender to unworldly ideals, but simply 
the overwhelming sense of the magnitude and worth of 
one’s own loves and longings, of one’s own precious soul- 
experiences — this, and not the other, is to be sought. 
Werther cannot resist the fate that drives him to load 
his heart down with emotion until it breaks. He feels 
how far asunder from the rest of mankind all this drives 
him. But he insists upon despising mankind, and upon 
reveling in the dangerous wealth of his inspiration. Now 
surely such a state of mind as this must injure men if 
they remain long in it. Men need work in life, and so 
long as they undertake to dig into their own bowels for 
the wonderful inner experiences that they may find by 
digging, so long must their lives be bad dreams. The 
purpose of these young men was the highest, but only 
those of them who, following this purpose, passed far 
beyond the simplicity of their youth, did work of lasting 
merit. The others stayed in a state of passionate form- 
lessness, or died early. The result of remaining long in 
this region, where nothing was of worth but a violent 
emotion or an incredible deed, one sees in such a man as 
Klinger, who lived long enough to reap what he had 
sown, but did not progress sufficiently to succeed in sow- 
ing anything but the wind. I remember once spending 


THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 309 


an idle hour on one of his later romances, written years 
after the time of Storm and Stress had passed by, which 
well expresses the state of mind, the sort of katzenjammer 
resulting from a long life of literary dissipation. It is 
Klinger’s Faustus — the same subject as Goethe’s mas- 
terpiece, but how differently treated! Faustus is a man 
desperately anxious to act. He wants to reform the 
world, to be sure, but that only by the way. His main 
object is to satisfy a vague, restless craving for tremen- 
dous excitement. The contract with the devil once 
made, he plunges into a course of reckless adventure. 
Where he undertakes to do good he only makes bad 
worse. Admirable about him is merely the magnitude of 
his projects, the vigor of his actions, the desperate cour- 
age wherewith he defies the universe. Brought to hell at 
last, he ends his career by cursing all things that are 
with such fearless and shocking plainness of speech that 
the devils themselves are horrified. Satan has to invent 
a new place of torment for him. He is banished, if I re- 
member rightly, into horrible darkness, where he is to 
pass eternity perfectly alone. Thus terribly the poet ex- 
presses the despair in which ends for him, as for all, this 
self-adoration of the man whose highest object is violent 
emotional experiences, enjoyed merely because they are 
his own, not because by having them one serves the 
Ideal. As a mere beginning, then, the Storm and Stress 
Period expressed a great awakening of the world to new 
life. But an abiding place in this state of mind there was 
none. What then followed? 

The two masters of German literature who passed 
through and rose above this period of beginnings, and 
created the great works of the classical period, were 
Goethe and Schiller. As poets, we are not now specially 
concerned with them. As moral teachers, what have 


310 THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 


they to tell us about the conduct and the worth of life? 
The answer is, they bear not altogether the same mes- 
sage. There is a striking contrast, well recognized by 
themselves and by all subsequent critics, between their 
views of life. Both aim at the highest, but seek in differ- 
ent paths. Goethe’s mature ideal seems to be a man of 
finely appreciative powers, who follows his life-calling 
quietly and with such diligence as to gain for himself 
independence and leisure, who so cultivates his mind 
that it is open to receive all noble impressions, and who 
then waits with a’sublime resignation, gained through 
years of self-discipline, for such experiences of what is 
grand in life and in the universe as the Spirit of Nature 
sees fit to grant to him. Wilhelm Meister, who works 
eagerly for success in a direction where success is im- 
possible, and who afterward finds bliss where he least 
expected to find it, seems to teach this lesson. Faust, at 
first eagerly demanding indefinite breadth and grandeur 
of life, and then coming to see what the limitations of 
human nature are, “that to man nothing perfect is 
given,’ and so at last finding the highest good of life in 
the thought that he and posterity must daily earn anew 
freedom, never be done with progressing, seems to illus- 
trate the same thought. Do not go beyond or behind 
Nature, Goethe always teaches. Live submissively the 
highest that it is given you to live, and neither cease 
quietly working, nor despair, nor rebel, but be open to 
every new and worthy experience. For Goethe this was 
a perfect solution of the problem of life. He needed no 
fixed system of dogmas to content him. In the divine 
serenity of one of the most perfect of minds, Goethe put 
in practice this maxim: Live thy life out to the full, 
earnestly but submissively, demanding what attainment 
thy nature makes possible, but not pining for more. 


THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 311 


Now, this of course is a selfish maxim. If the highest 
life is to be unselfish, Goethe cannot have given us the 
final solution to the problem. His selfishness was not of 
a low order. It was like the selfishness in the face of the 
Apollo Belvedere, the simple consciousness of vast per- 
sonal worth. But it was selfishness for all that. We see 
how it grew for him out of his early enthusiasm. The 
Storm and Stress Period had been full of the thought 
that there is something grand in the emotional nature of 
man, and that this something must be cultivated. Now, 
Goethe, absorbed in the faith of the time — himself, in 
fact, its high priest — learned after a while that all these 
much sought treasures of emotion were there already, in 
his own being, and that they needed no long search, no 
storming at all. He had but to be still and watch them. 
He needed no anxious brooding to find ideals; he went 
about quietly, meeting the ideal everywhere. The ob- 
ject of search thus attained, in so far as any mortal could 
attain it, Goethe the poet was in perfect harmony with 
the Goethe of practical life; and so was formed the creed 
of the greatest man of the century. But it was a creed of 
little more than personal significance. For us the grand 
example remains, but the attainment of like perfection 
is impossible, and we must look for another rule of living. 
For those sensitive and earnest people who learn, as 
many learn while yet mere school boys or school girls, 
that there is a great wealth of splendid emotional life, of 
affection and aspiration and devotion, shut up in their 
own hearts; for those who, feeling this, want to develop 
this inner nature, to enjoy these high gifts, to order their 
lives accordingly, to avoid shams and shows, and to pos- 
sess the real light of life — for such natural Transcen- 
dentalists, what shall Goethe’s precept avail? Alas! 
their little lives are not Olympian, like his. They can- 


Chie THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 


not meet the Ideal everywhere. Poetry does not come 
to express their every feeling. No Grand Duke calls 
them to his court. No hosts of followers worship them. 
Of all this they are not worthy. Yet they ought to find 
some path, be it never so steep a one, to a truly higher 
life. Resignation may be the best mood, but Goethe’s 
reason for resignation such souls have not. 

Perhaps Schiller’s creed may have more meaning for 
men in general. In fact, Schiller, though no common 
man, had much more in him that common men may, 
without trouble, appreciate. His origin was humble, 
and the way up steep and rough. In his earlier writings 
the Storm and Stress tendency takes a simpler and 
cruder form than that of Werther. What Schiller ac- 
complished was for a long time the result of very hard 
work, done in the midst of great doubt and perplexity. 
Schiller’s ideal is, therefore, to use his own figure, the 
laborious, oppressed, and finally victorious Hercules — 
i. e., the man who fears no toil in the service of the high- 
est, who knows that there is something of the divine in 
him, who restlessly strives to fulfill his destiny, and who 
at last ascends to the sight and knowledge of the truly 
perfect. Schiller’s maxim, therefore, is: Toil ceaselessly 
to give thy natural powers their full development, know- 
ing that nothing is worth having but a full consciousness 
of all that thou hast of good, now latent and unknown 
within thee. Resignation, therefore, though it is the 
title of one of Schiller’s poems, is never his normal active 
mood. He retains to the end a good deal of the old 
Storm and Stress. He is always a sentimental poet, to 
use the epithet in his own sense; that is, he is always 
toiling for the ideal, never quite sure that he is possessed 
of it. He dreams sometimes, that he soon will know the 
perfect state of mind; but he never does attain, nor does 


THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 313 


he seem, like Goethe, content with the eternal progress. 
There is an under-current of complaint and despair in 
Schiller, which only the splendid enthusiasm of the man 
keeps, for the most part, out of sight. Some of his poems 
are largely under its influence. 

Now, this creed, in so far as it is earnest and full of 
faith in the ideal, appeals very much more immediately 
than does Goethe’s creed to the average sensitive mind. 
Given a soul that is awake to the higher emotions, and 
if you tell such a one to work earnestly and without rest 
to develop this better self, you will help him more than if 
you bid him contemplate the grand attainment of a 
Goethe, and be resigned to his own experiences as 
Goethe was to his. For most of us the higher life is to be 
gained only through weary labor, if at all. But what 
seems to be lacking in Schiller’s creed is a sufficiently 
concrete definition of the ideal that he seeks. Any atten- 
tive reader of Faust feels strongly, if vaguely, what it is 
that Faust is looking for. But one may read Schiller’s 
“Das Ideal und das Leben”’ a good many times without 
really seeing what it is that the poor Hercules, or his 
earthly representative, is seeking. Schiller is no doubt, 
on the whole, the simpler poet, yet I must say that if I 
wanted to give any one his first idea of what perfection 
of mind and character is most worthy of search, I should 
send such a one to Goethe rather than to Schiller. Schil- 
ler talks nobly about the way to perfection, but he de- 
fines perfection quite abstractly. Goethe is not very 
practical in his directions about the road, but surely no 
higher or clearer ideals of what is good in emotion and 
action can be put into our minds than those he suggests 
in almost any passage you please, if he is in a serious 
mood, and is talking about good and evil at all. 

But neither of the classical poets satisfied his readers 


314 THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 


merely as a moral teacher. As poets, they remain what 
they always seemed — classics, indeed; but as thinkers 
they did little more than state a problem. Here is a 
higher life, and they tell us about it. But wherein con- 
sists its significance, how it 1s to be preached to the race, 
how sought by each one of us — these questions remain 
still open. 

And open they are, the constant theme for eager dis- 
cussion and for song all through the early part of the 
nineteenth century. Close upon the classical period fol- 
lowed the German Romantic school. Young men again, 
full of earnestness and of glorious experience! On they 
come, confident that they at least are called to be apos- 
tles, determined to reform life and poetry — the one 
through the other. Surely they will solve the problem, 
and tell us how to cultivate this all important higher 
nature. Fichte, the great idealist, whose words set 
men’s hearts afire, or else, alas! make men laugh at him; 
young Friedrich Schlegel, versatile, liberal in conduct 
even beyond the bounds that may not safely be passed, 
bold in spirit even to insolence; the wonderful Novalis, 
so profound, and yet so unaffected and childlike, so 
tender in emotion and yet so daring in speculation; 
Schelling, full of vast philosophic projects; Tieck, skill- 
ful weaver of romantic fancies; Schleiermacher, gifted 
theologian and yet disciple of Spinoza; surely, these are 
the men to complete the work that will be left unfinished 
when Schiller dies and Goethe grows older. So at least, 
they thought and their friends. Never were young men 
more confident; and yet never did learned and really 
talented men, to the most of whom was granted long life 
with vigor, more completely fail to accomplish anything 
of permanent value in the direction of their early efforts. 
As mature men, some of them were very influential and 


THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS ighits 


useful, but not in the way in which they first sought to 
be useful. There is to my mind a great and sad fascina- 
tion in studying the lives and thoughts of this school, in 
whose fate seems to be exemplified the tragedy of our 
century. Such aspirations, such talents, and such a 
failure! Fragments of inspired verse and prose, splendid 
plans, earnest private letters to friends, prophetic visions 
and nothing more of enduring worth. Further and 
further goes the movement, in its worship of the emo- 
tional, away from the actual needs of human life. Dra- 
matic art, the test of the poet that has a deep insight into 
the problems of our nature, is tried, with almost com- 
plete failure. The greatest dramatic poet of the new 
era, one that, if he had lived, might have rivaled Schiller, 
was Heinrich von Kleist, author of the Prinz von Hom- 
burg. Driven to despair by unsolved problems and by 
loneliness, this poet shot himself before his life-work was 
more than fairly begun. There remain a few dramas, 
hardly finished, a few powerful tales, and a bundle of 
fragments to tell us what he was. His fate is typical of 
the work of the younger school between the years 1805 
and 1815. There was a keen sense of the worth of emo- 
tional experience, and an inability to come into unity 
with one’s aspirations. Life and poetry, as the critics 
have it, were at variance. 

Now, in all this, these men were not merely fighting 
shadows. What they sought to do is eternally valuable. 
They felt, and felt nobly, as all generous-minded, warm- 
hearted youths and maidens at some time do feel. They 
were not looking for fame alone; they wanted to be and 
to produce the highest that mortals may. It 1s a pity 
that we have not just now more like them. Yet their 
eftorts failed. What problems Goethe and Schiller, men 
of genius and of good fortune, had solved for themselves 


316 THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 


alone, men of lesser genius or of less happy lives could 
only puzzle over. The poetry of the next following age 
is largely the poetry of melancholy. The emotional 
movement spread all over Europe; men everywhere 
strove to make life richer and worthier; and most men 
grew sad at their little success. Alfred de Musset, in a 
well known book, has told in the gloomiest strain the 
story of the unrest, the despair, the impotency of the 
youth of the Restoration. 

Wordsworth and Shelley represent in very much con- 
trasted ways the efforts of English poets to carry on the 
work of Transcendentalism, and these men succeeded, 
in this respect, better than their fellows. Wordsworth 
is full of a sense of the deep meaning of little things and 
of the most common life. Healthy men, that work like 
heroes, that have lungs full of mountain air, and that yet 
retain the simplicity of shepherd life, or children, whose 
eyes and words teach purity and depth of feeling, are to 
him the most direct suggestions of the ideal. Life is, for 
Wordsworth, everywhere an effort to be at once simple 
and full of meaning; in harmony with nature, and yet 
not barbarous. But Wordsworth, if he has very much to 
teach us, seems to lack the persuasive enthusiasm of the 
poetic leader of men. At all events, his appeal has 
reached, so far, only a class. He can be all in all to them, 
his followers, but he did not reform the world. Shelley, 
is, perhaps, the one of all English poets in this century 
to whom was given the purest ideal delight in the higher 
affections. If you want to be eager to act out the best 
that is in you, read Shelley. If you want to cultivate a 
sense for the best in the feelings of all human hearts, 
read Shelley. He has taught very many to long for a 
worthy life and for purity of spirit. But, alas! Shelley, 
again, knows not how to teach the way to the acquire- 


THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 317 


ment of the end that he so enthusiastically describes. 
If you can feel with him, he does you good. If you fail 
to understand him, he is no systematic teacher. At best, 
he will arouse a longing. He can never wholly satisfy it. 
Shelley wanted to be no mere writer. He had in him a 
desire to reform the world. But when he speaks of re- 
form one sees how vague an idea he had of the means. 
Prometheus, the Titan, who represents in Shelley’s 
poem oppressed humanity, is bound on the mountain. 
The poem is to tell us of his deliverance. But how is this 
accomplished? Why, simply when a certain fated hour 
comes, foreordained, but by nobody in particular, up 
comes Demogorgon, the spirit of eternity, stalks before 
the throne of Jupiter, the tyrant, and orders him out 
into the abyss; and thereupon Prometheus is unchained, 
and the earth is happy. Why did not all this happen be- 
fore? Apparently, because Demogorgon did not sooner 
leave the under-world. What a motive is this for an 
allegoric account of the deliverance of humanity! Mere 
accident rules everything, and yet apparently, there is a 
coming triumph to work for. The poet of lofty emotions 
is but an eager child when he is to advise us to act. 
The melancholy side of the literary era that extends 
from 1815 to 1840 is represented especially by two poets, 
Byron and Heine. Both treat the same great problem, 
What is this life, and what in it is of most worth? Both 
recognize the need there is for something more than mere 
existence. Both know the value of emotion, and both 
would wish to lead men to an understanding of this 
value, if only they thought that men could be led. 
Despairing themselves, of ever attaining an ideal peace 
of mind, they give themselves over to melancholy. 
Despairing of raising men even to their own level, they 
become scornful, and spend far too much time in merely 


318 THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 


negative criticism. The contrast between them is not a 
little instructive. Byron is too often viewed by super- 
ficial readers merely in the light of his early sentimental 
poems. Those, for our present purpose, may be disre- 
garded. It is the Byron of Manfred and Cain that I now 
have in mind. As for Heine, Matthew Arnold long since 
said the highest in praise of his ethical significance that 
we may dare to say. Surely both men have great de- 
fects. They are one-sided, and often insincere. But 
they are children of the ideal. Byron has, I think, the 
greater force of character, but the gift of seeing well 
what is beautiful and pathetic in life fell to the lot of 
Heine. The one is great in spirit, the other in experi- 
ence. Byron is, by nature, combative, a hater of wrong, 
one often searching for the highest truth; but his experi- 
ence is petty and heart-sickening, his real world is miser- 
ably unworthy of his ideal world, and he seems driven 
on into the darkness like his own Cain and Manfred. 
Heine has more the faculty of vision. The perfect de- 
light in a moment of emotion is given to him as it has 
seldom been given to any man since the unknown 
makers of the popular ballads. Hence, his frequent use 
of ballad forms and incidents. Surely, Byron could 
never have given us that picture of Edith of the Swan’s 
Neck searching for the dead King Harold on the field of 
Hastings, which Heine has painted in one of the ballads 
of the Romancero. But, on the other hand, Heine lacks 
the force to put into active life the meaning and beauty 
that he can so well appreciate. He sees in dreams, but 
he cannot create in the world the ideal of perfection. So 
he is bitter and despairing. He takes a cruel delight in 
pointing out the shams of the actual world. Naturally 
romantic, he attacks romantic tendencies, ever fresh 
with hate and scorn. In brief, to live the higher life, and 


THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 319 


to teach others to live it also, one would have to be 
heroic in action, like Byron, and gifted with the power 
to see, as Heine saw, what is precious, and, in all its sim- 
plicity, noble, about human experience. The union of 
Byron and Heine would have been a new, and, I think, 
a higher, sort of Goethe. 

Since these have passed away we have had our Emer- 
son, our Carlyle, our Tennyson. Upon these men we 
cannot dwell now. I pass to the result of the whole long 
struggle. Humanity was seeking, in these its chosen 
representative men, to attain to a fuller emotional life. 
A conflict resulted with the petty and ignoble in human 
nature, and with the dead resistance of material forces. 
Men grew old and died in this conflict, did wonderful 
things, and—did not conquer. And now, at last, 
Europe gave up the whole effort, and fell to thinking 
about physical science and about great national move- 
ments. The men of the last age are gone, or are fast 
going, and we are left face to face with a dangerous prac- 
tical materialism. The time is one of unrest, but not of 
great moral leaders. Action is called for, and, vigorous 
as we are, spiritual activity 1s not one of the specialties 
of the modern world. 

So much, then, for the reasons why what I have for 
brevity’s sake called Transcendentalism lost its hold on 
the life of the century. The reasons were briefly these: 
First, the ideal sought by the men of the age of which we 
have spoken was too selfish, not broad and human 
enough. Goethe might save himself, but he could not 
teach us the road. Secondly, men did not strive long 
and earnestly enough. Surely, if the problems of human 
conduct are to be solved, if life is to be made full of emo- 
tion, strong, heroic, and yet not cold, we must all unite, 
men, women, and children, in the common cause of liv- 


320 THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS 


ing ourselves as best we can, and of helping others, by 
spoken and by written word, to do the same. We lack 
perseverance and leaders. Thirdly, the splendid suc- 
cesses of certain modern investigations have led away 
men’s minds from the study of the conduct of life to a 
study of the evolution of life. I respect the latter study, 
but I do not believe it fills the place of the former. I 
wish there were time in our hurried modern life, for 
both. I know there must be found time, and that right 
quickly, for the study of the old problems of the Faust 
of Goethe. 7 

With this conclusion, the present study arrives at the 
goal set at the beginning. How we are to renew these 
old discussions, what solution of them we are to hope 
for, whether we shall ever finally solve them, what the 
true ideal of life is — of all such matters I would not 
presume to write further at this present. But let us not 
forget that if our Evolution textbooks contain much of 
solid — yes, of inspiring — truth, they do not contain 
all the knowledge that is essential to a perfect life or to 
the needs of humanity. A philosophy made possible by 
the deliberate neglect of that thought-movement, whose 
literary expression was the poetry of our century, can- 
not itself be broad enough and deep enough finally to do 
away with the needs embodied in that thought-move- 
ment. Let one, knowing this fact, be therefore, earnest 
in the search for whatever may make human life more 
truly worth living. Let him read again, if he has read 
before, or begin to read, if he has never read, our Emer- 
son, our Carlyle, our Tennyson, or the men of years ago, 
who so aroused the ardent souls of the best among our 
fathers. Let him study Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Words- 
worth, anything and everything that can arouse in him 
a sense of our true spiritual needs. And having read, let 


THE DECAY OF EARNESTNESS gone 


him work in the search after the ideal — work not for 
praise, but for the good of his time. 

And then, perhaps, some day a new and a mightier 
Transcendental Movement may begin — a great river, 
that shall not run to waste and be lost in the deserts of 
sentimental melancholy. 


DOUBTING AND WORKING! 
[ 1881 | 


"Tse is a well known speculation of Dr. Holmes 
as to the number of people who really are con- 
cerned in a conversation between any two men. 
Each one of these men has a real and true character — 
is what he is. Each one of the men has a notion of the 
other’s character, and probably thinks his notion a very 
fair one. And eaclrone hasa still more distinct and fixed 
idea as to his own character. Now, the words of each 
man are determined by what he himself really is, by 
what he thinks of himself, and by what he holds of the 
other. So that in fact six people, two real and four imag- 
inary — to wit, the two real men, their ideas of them- 
selves and their ideas of each other — take part in this 
simplest form of human society. How complicated then, 
must be the state of things when a whole group of people 
are concerned, each one speaking forth his own true na- 
ture, but affected in his words by what he supposes his 
own nature to be, and by the way in which he fancies his 
sayings will impress the ghostly images that are what he 
takes to be his real companions. 

This speculation suggests a like one as to the number 
of partly imaginary worlds that form subjects of study 
and amusement for the myriads of human beings in the 
one actual world. It is a commonplace that in some 
sense every man may be said to move in a world of his 
own. Yet the consequences of this commonplace are not 
always considered. Think of them a moment. Here is 
an ordinary person before us, taken as a type of hu- 


1 Revision of an earlier essay on “The Work of the Truth- 
Seeker,” read before the Literary Society. 


DOUBTING AND WORKING 323 


manity. His view of the world might be taken as an 
example, so it would seem, of the way in which the 
people of this planet know and appreciate the universe. 
Yet, no. Could you look into his soul for a minute it is 
probable that you would find very much in his conscious- 
ness that would be strange to you and to other men. 
Think first of his senses themselves. Experience has 
shown that common men can go through the world for 
a very long time without suspecting or showing that 
they have some very important defect of the senses. 
Cross-eyed men, I have heard, sometimes by a painless 
process lose the sight of one eye, and yet go for years 
without finding out their defect until chance or necessity 
brings them under the skilled examination of an oculist. 
Late statistics make a basis for the claim that as many 
as one in every twenty-five male persons will be found to 
be color blind. Yet only by careful tests are color-blind 
people to be distinguished from people with normal 
vision. It is probable that there are often somewhat 
similar defects in the sense of hearing which go un- 
noticed for along time. Yet more, the researches of men 
like Helmholtz have proved that there are many optical 
illusions common to most or to all of us, which are un- 
noticed or unconsciously corrected our lives long, and 
which never could become known without skillful ex- 
periment. And if all this is true, how can we ever feel 
sure that in the field that lies beyond the reach of pos- 
sible experiment, in the field of each man’s own primary 
sensations themselves, there are not entirely mysterious 
sources of variety, so that the ultimate sensations of one 
person may be of their nature not comparable at all with 
the ultimate sensations of his neighbor? Thus, then, our 
normal man may be in fact a creature of entirely pe- 
culiar constitution; yet we may not know the fact. His 


324 DOUBTING AND WORKING 


world may be one that would be inconceivably strange 
to us. Yet we talk with him in common fashion day 
after day. But, leaving the field of conjecture and com- 
ing back to the point where it is possible to judge and 
compare, I say that we may very probably find upon 
examination that there are peculiarities in the mind of 
the person we are considering which may make the 
simplest operation of his thought such as we can neither 
imitate nor easily understand. Take, for example, his 
memory.! There seem to be two somewhat different 
kinds of memoriesin the world. I suppose that there are 
all the gradations between the two extremes, but at the 
extremes the contrast is very marked. One kind of 
memory is that which 1s especially helped by images, 
which is in fact largely a reimaging in the mind of 
things past, so that they appear much as they actually 
seemed when they were presented to the outward senses, 
only fainter. The other is a memory moving less in dis- 
tinct and vivid images than in faint and broken incom- 
plete mind-symbols that come up one after another, as 
association or volition calls them into consciousness. 
How, for example, do you remember that seven multi- 
plied by seven equals forty-nine? If you have the image- 
memory, you may picture well before you a bit of the 
multiplication table, as you once saw it, with figures of 
some definite color, on a ground of some definite color. 
Clearly stand out the images in your mind as soon as you 
think of the numbers. You simply read off the result. 
If you have the other kind of memory, probably there 
arises a confused and faint form of the figures, curiously 
mingled with a memory somewhat more well defined, of 


1 See concerning the following: The communications of Mr. 
Francis Galton to the journal, Nature, at various times within 
the past two years, and his article in Mind for July, 1880, 


DOUBTING AND WORKING eo 


the sound of the names of these numbers. The imaging 
is so obscure that you doubtless are inclined to say that 
you know not how you do remember at all, but merely 
know that you remember. Plainer becomes the contrast 
between the two kinds of memory when we come to 
speak of what happened to us at any time. The images 
of past scenes that arise in our various minds differ 
much as to completeness of detail and as to definiteness 
of outline. For one, forms are clear in memory; for an- 
other, colors. One remembers the positions of things, 
another faces and expressions. One knows when a pas- 
sage in some book is referred to or quoted whether he 
saw that passage printed on the right or on the left side 
of the open page of the book where he read it. Such a 
one will remember on what shelf of a library he found a 
certain work. To another all these things are vague, 
but he can remember nearly a whole play, passage after 
passage, after witnessing the play twice on the stage, or 
a whole piece of music, after one or two performances. 
Yet, perhaps, such a one could not remember the demon- 
stration of a theorem in geometry long enough to repeat 
it ina class-room. Now, if you reflect what a great part 
memory plays in our actual consciousness, I think you 
must readily admit that when memories differ so much, 
not merely in power, but in nature, the thoughts of men, 
their ideas of the world about them, their whole con- 
scious lives, must differ very much also. 

I have mentioned differences in men’s views of the 
world as thus exemplified in the more elementary 
activities of mental life. What shall we say when we 
come to the more complicated structures of the human 
mind, to those vague forms of consciousness in which 
are expressed our sense of the value of life and of the 
world, and to our opinions? Who shall serve for our 


326 DOUBTING AND WORKING 


normal specimen man here? How vastly we differ in all 
these things. How hard it is for us to come to an under- 
standing. How the delights of one man appear as the 
most hateful of things to another, and the ideals of one 
party seem inventions of the devil to their opponents. 
All this illustrates the fact that we live in worlds differ- 
ing far more from one another than we commonly like to 
think. Our normal man would surely be hard to choose. 
If we choose him, we should hardly comprehend him. To 
be more particular in our study, let us glance briefly at 
the wide range of what I may call purely general im- 
pressions, such as we in some wise get of life and of the 
universe, and which we so keep without analyzing or 
being well able to analyze them, although such impres- 
sions influence all our acts. 

Every one has, I suppose, some ideal, some notion of 
what he anticipates and desires in his life and in the 
world about him. To every one this world appears as an 
excellent or as an evil place, and every one has some 
highest good which he seeks here in life, though he may 
never have formulated his aim. Now, it is certain that 
any man’s creed, and the extent of the knowledge he is 
to acquire (and so what we have called above this man’s 
world), will depend on the way in which this general 
view of the aims and conditions of life leads him. Against 
the fundamental prejudices of a man you will argue in 
vain. Time may change them; you cannot. And these 
prejudices make for him his world. To a man who de- 
fined poetry as “‘misrepresentation in verse,” and to the 
poet Shelley, how was it possible to look on this universe 
of forms and colors, of lights and shadows, of land and 
water and infinite space, and to see in it the same world? 
To the one it must be a complex of determinate rela- 
tions; to the other a scene of grand conflicts, of divine 


DOUBTING AND WORKING 327 


life, and of supernatural beauty. The difference between 
Mr. Herbert Spencer and Cardinal Newman, or be- 
tween Professor Huxley and Mr. Ruskin, or between 
Hegel and Heinrich Heine — shall we call it merely a 
difference in the interpretation of the recorded facts of 
experience? No; evidently there are here different kinds 
of experience concerned, actually different worlds, dif- 
ferent orders of truth. These men cannot come to a 
good understanding, because they have qualitatively 
different minds, irreconcilably various mental visions. 
Each of two such individuals may be inclined to regard 
the other as perverse. Both are, in fact, shut up within 
the narrow bounds of a poor individual experience. 
_ They will never understand one another so long as they 
remain what they are — finite minds full of fallacy and 
self-confidence, and of a darkness that is broken only 
here and there by flashes of light. 

If the world’s leaders are thus such narrow men, what 
are we who follow? How poor and narrow and uncertain 
must our world-pictures be. Glance inward at your own 
experience fora moment. You often say that a color, or 
odor, or melody, or place, or person 1s associated in your 
minds with some event, or feeling, or idea. You cannot 
think of one without the other. 

Now, a study of mental life convinces us that these 
vague associations of which you speak tend to combine 
and multiply in manifold wise. When an association is 
itself forgotten, the effect of it lives on in the form of 
some liking, or aversion, or mental prejudgment. By 
combination these associations form foundations on 
which yet higher structures can be built. All go to make 
up your picture of the universe. Yet many such associ- 
ations are purely personal. You can but ill describe 
them. Still more, you inherit from your ancestors not 


328 DOUBTING AND WORKING 


merely the general mass of common tendencies that be- 
longs to humanity as a whole, but you also inherit cer- 
tain peculiar tendencies, associations, and feelings that 
influence your whole life, and that make you in a sense 
incomprehensible to those whose disposition is different 
from your own. If we could see one another’s minds 
open before us, and study them at our leisure, how many 
singular aernoi rae we should witness. No museum of 
curiosities could approach in variety and oddness a mu- 
seum in which some hundred minds were preserved and 
bottled up, or dissected and laid out for inspection under 
glass cases; or, better still, left alive behind bars, and 
allowed to exhibit their whole action for our benefit. As 
it is, the study of the inner workings of men’s individual 
minds 1s obscured by the complexity of each, by the lack 
of the virtue of frankness, by the impossibility of finding 
in most cases a skilled observer. Every one has nooks 
and corners in his own mind to which he is himself more 
or less a stranger. Every man is an enigma to every 
other. And this variety in our minds, what does it mean 
but vagueness and uncertainty and obscurity in all our 
opinions? 

But, now (coming to the study of the opinions them- 
selves), every one of these many minds sets itself up as 
a measure of truth. Distorted by the heterogeneous 
medium into which the light falls, the images given by 
experience must still serve, poor as they are, to fill up 
for us the picture of our world. Exposed to the largest 
errors of observation, to the greatest defects of memory, 
to the incalculable interference of passion and prejudice, 
to the disadvantage of being surrounded by numberless 
obscure associations, we, the thinking beings, live in 
this amusing chaos of our fleeting conscious states and 
spend our time in making assertions about the universe. 


DOUBTING AND WORKING 329 


What does this fool-hardiness mean? What right have 
we to hold opinions at all? Why must we not be per- 
fect skeptics? What in a short life of mistake and con- 
jecture can we be supposed to learn about the nature 
of things? What can be the truth, that we should look 
for it? 

To this problem we are led then, irresistibly. Here is 
a chaos of various minds whose simpler ideas seem to 
vary enormously, whose feelings grow so far asunder 
that each man becomes a mystery to his neighbor, whose 
conflicting opinions in consequence are all the results 
largely of accident, and certainly of narrowness of view. 
Yet it seems to be thought an excellent thing for each 
one of them to form fixed opinions about at least some 
matters, a sane undertaking for them to look for some 
sort of abiding truth, and a grand act to suffer loss, or 
even death, for the sake of the strongest and highest at 
least among one’s beliefs. Why should this be the case? 
What is the use of truth-seeking when so little truth will 
ever be found on this planet? What is the worth of re- 
maining true to one’s opinions when everything tends to 
make them fleeting? These questions must, I think, 
come into the mind of every active person at some time 
during his life. I have not in the foregoing stated the 
skeptic’s case nearly as strongly as I could state it. The 
more you consider human knowledge, the more you will 
see that some of its dearest pretenses are found upon ex- 
amination to be only pretenses. And when you see this, 
you are, if of vigorous mental constitution, once for all 
aroused from what a great philosopher called the “dog- 
matic slumber,” and sent out upon a new search. The 
questions you then propose to yourself can thus be 
stated: What kind of truth may I hope to discover? In 
what spirit ought I to search for truth? Am I to hope for 


330 DOUBTING AND WORKING 


much success? Am I to bear myself as one towhom truth 
will certainly be revealed, if he but work for it? Or shall 
I,in a humbler spirit, say that lam probably to remain in 
doubt so long as I live? Or, finally, shall I, neither con- 
fident of success nor resigned to defeat, rise with all my 
strength and declare that, whether finding or baffled, 
whether a wanderer forever, or one who at last is to 
reach a secure harbor of faith, I will, through confidence 
and through doubt, through good and through evil re- 
port, search earnestly for truth, though I never find any- 
thing that it is worth my while to call abiding? Some 
suggestions about the answer to this whole series of 
questions form my subject in the rest of this paper. And, 
first, what is the spirit in which we should search for the 
truth that now, from this skeptical point of view, seems 
so far away from us? 

The first answer to this question seems an obvious 
one. We must begin our undertaking in a spirit of self- 
distrust. For our former confidence in our chance opin- 
ions we must substitute complete skepticism. We must 
doubt every belief that we possess until we have proved 
it. This answer, I say, seems the obvious one after the 
foregoing discussion. Is it a good one? 

Note just here, if you please, that the precept, begin 
to look for truth by doubting all you formerly believed, 
does not imply irreverence or mere rashness. On the 
contrary, this doubt means simply modesty, self-distrust, 
and is founded not on a whim, but on a persuasion that 
all one’s former beliefs have been largely the result of 
accident. The precept says such and such a belief that 
you have may indeed be very dear and sacred, and may 
have to do with very high and holy things. But con- 
sider — it is your opinion, is it not? Yes. The question 
is not the loftiness, or the sacredness, or the dearness of 


DOUBTING AND WORKING 331 


the objects about which your faith concerned itself, but 
the worth of that particular belief you have about these 
objects. When we say question your belief, we do not 
mean that this or that subject that seemed to you holy 
ground before shall not seem holy ground now. Not in 
the least is it desired to affect your emotions as emotions. 
We are talking of your individual opinions. If this 
ground is holy, so much the better reason that you 
should not profane it with your narrow-mindedness and 
mistakes. Better that you should say, “Here is a sub- 
ject of awful and sacred import, but I know very little 
about it,” than that you should proudly affirm, “Of this 
sacred theme my mind is so full that I know whole vol- 
umes of truth about it’’ — should affirm this and yet 
should really be in gross error about the theme. The 
loftier, the more worthy of reverence the subject of your 
belief, the more necessary it is that you examine skepti- 
cally the faith in which you by accident have grown up, 
lest where the highest interests are concerned your mind 
should be farthest away from harmony with reality. If 
you understand the precept in this way, as a precept to 
doubt yourself and all beliefs that have grown up in you 
uncriticized, then I am sure that you will not find the 
precept in its nature irreverent or over-hasty. 

Yet this precept itself has often been called in doubt. 
In answer to the arguments just urged, it has been set 
forth that truth-seeking never ought to begin with a 
doubt universal — that doubting is dangerous when it 
touches upon certain sacred matters, and that such 
truth-seeking as I have described is only fit for those 
who, like Nihilists, undertake to upset the whole exist- 
ing order of things, in law, in morality, and in religious 
belief. This counter-argument, to the effect that un- 
limited doubting is idle and often wicked, I ought to 


Ree DOUBTING AND WORKING 


mention and to consider. Let us be careful, when we 
speak of truth-seeking itself, against taking too much of 
any kind of assertions for granted. I examine then forth- 
with the precept given above. 

The object of your universal doubt, says one, is, as 
you declare, to lead you to a knowledge of the truth. 
You doubt because you desire to learn. Your doubting 
is to be a transition stage. You must assert then that 
truth is an end sufficiently valuable to be worth attain- 
ing through all the pain and toil of your search. The 
truth then, would: be something very well worth know- 
ing. Is it not so? To complete your own individual 
narrow world-picture, and so to get the only proper 
world-picture, this you hold would be a great end gained. 
All this seems certain enough. 

Now, continues the objector, how can you know that 
it would be a good thing to be possessed of the truth, in 
case you do not know whether the world you live in is a 
good world, and whether the life you live in it is one that 
is worth living? In other words, earnest truth-seeking 
implies a persuasion that the truth, if known, would be 
not disheartening, dreadful, inhuman, but inspiring, 
lovely — of a nature to satisfy the best cravings of the 
human heart. If this is so, the objector goes on — if, in 
order to make the search for truth a worthy quest, we 
must assume that the world of truth is a world of excel- 
lence —where shall we then first of all look for an ideal 
picture of this world, such that, by contemplating the 
ideal picture of what truth must be, we shall be inspired 
to search for what truth is? The answer is, we must 
search in that system of belief which expresses in the 
clearest form to our minds the highest cravings of our 
hearts. If that system of belief is substantially true, then 
the search for more truth is well founded. If we must, 


DOUBTING AND WORKING 333 


however, begin by doubting the truth of this system 
along with all our other beliefs, then we must begin to 
search for truth by doubting that it is worth while to 
search for truth at all. What will become of our earnest- 
ness? In short, says the objector, either the foundations 
of my religious belief are sure beyond a doubt, or else it 
is not worth while to make any extended search for truth 
beyond the bounds of this faith. For either my faith 
agrees with reality — and then why doubt it? — or this 
faith, wherein are embodied the highest longings and 
ideals of my nature, is at variance with the reality. 
Then the world is a hopeless maze to me. Nothing is 
worth the trouble of living at all. Still less is it worth 
my while to enter upon any ardent quest, to search for 
a far off and difficult truth, that will be, when found, 
simply intolerable. I decline to seek truth, and prefer 
to remain where I am. 

Such is, in brief, the case of those who hold that seek- 
ing for truth must be begun in a spirit of faith, and not 
in a spirit of doubt; that we must first hold fast that 
which is plainly good, and then prove all else. Yet I 
cannot feel satisfied, that I have stated this case strongly 
enough. Because I am myself inclined to the opinion 
that the truth-seeker must begin by doubting all his old 
beliefs, and must then follow his thought wherever re- 
search leads him, I may have failed in justice in the state- 
ment of a view which has the sanction of many of the 
world’s ablest minds. Let me translate, therefore, the 
words of a noted German thinker of our day, Hermann 
Lotze, a philosopher who among his great qualities has 
certainly not omitted the virtue of ceaseless self-criti- 
cism, but who yet holds fast by the faith that we study 
the world because we believe it to be a good world. 
Lotze says in the preface to his book, called the Mzkro- 


334 DOUBTING AND WORKING 


kosmos (I translate with some omissions and condensa- 
tions): 


The growing self-consciousness of science, which, after cen- 
turies of wavering, sees indubitable laws reigning in some at 
least of the classes of phenomena, threatens to distort the true 
relation between the heart and the intellect. We are no longer 
content to postpone the questions with which our dreams and 
hopes disturb us when we set about our investigations. We 
deny our duty to pay any attention to these questions at all. 
We say that science is a pure service of truth for the sake of 
truth, and need not care whether the truth satisfies or wounds 
the selfish wishes of the heart. And so here, as elsewhere, the 
human spirit changes its tone from hesitation to defiance, and 
after it has once felt the pride of independent investigation, 
throws itself into the arms of that false heroism which takes 
credit for having renounced what never ought to be renounced; 
and thus the mind estimates the amount of truth in its new 
belief according to the degree of hostility with which this be- 
lief offends everything that appears to the living emotional 
nature of man outside of science, too sacred to be touched. 
This worship of truth seems to me unjust. Could it be the only 
concern of human research to picture in the mind the precise 
state of things in the outer world, what would then be the 
worth of this whole trouble, which would end only in an empty 
repetition, so that what was before outside the soul now would 
be found again imaged in the soul? What significance would 
there be in the empty play of this duplication, what necessity 
that the thinking mind should be a mirror for whatever is un- 
thinking, in case the discovery of truth were not always at the 
same time the creation of some good thing, that would justify 
the trouble of winning it? Individual seekers may, absorbed 
in their toil, forget the great fact that all their efforts have in 
the end only this significance, that, in company with the ef- 
forts of numberless others, they may draw such a picture of the 
world as shall tell us what we have to reverence as the true end 
of existence, what we have to do, and what we have to hope. 
As often as a revolution in science drives out old fashions of 
opinion, the new organization of belief will have to justify it- 
self by the enduring or growing satisfaction that it offers to the 
invincible demands of our emotional nature. 


DOUBTING AND WORKING 335 


So far, then, for the opinion of those who hold that 
truth is sought not for its own sake, but for the sake of 
the good it carries to mankind — and carries not merely 
because it is truth, but because the world of which it is 
the truth is a good world. Such persons must conclude 
that all earnest and considerate search for truth is based 
on the postulate that our world is a good world. If we 
shall accept this view, we will always carry with us our 
religious faith whenever we set about an investigation 
of nature’s mysteries. But is this view, with its objec- 
tions to the precept wherewith we set out, a true view? 
For my part, I am inclined to hold fast by my former 
precept. I admit that looking for truth implies a postu- 
late that truth is worth the looking for, and a postulate 
that the world is such that it would be a good thing to 
know the nature of the world. Yet I still cling to my 
rule, and say, begin to search for truth by doubting all 
that you have without criticism come to hold as true. 
If you fail to doubt everything, doubt all you can. 
Doubt not because doubting is a good end, but because 
it is a good beginning. Doubt not for amusement, but 
as a matter of duty. Doubt not superficially, but with 
thoroughness. Doubt not flippantly, but with the deep- 
est — it may be with the saddest — earnestness. Doubt 
as you would undergo a surgical operation, because it is 
necessary to thought-health. So only can you hope to 
attain convictions that are worth having. If you do not 
wish to think, then [have nothing to say. Then, indeed, 
you need not doubt at all, but take all you please for 
granted. But who then cares at all what you happen to 
fancy about the world? 

Why do I persist in this terrible precept, with all the 
objections before me? Why, if doubting is dangerous 
and almost certainly transient, and very probably agon- 


336 DOUBTING AND WORKING 


izing, should I still be determined to doubt and to coun- 
sel doubting of every uncriticized and unproved opinion? 
Let me tell you. 

If one says I must begin my thought by clinging fast 
to my faith, because only that gives me assurance that 
there is anything in the world worth seeking, then we 
reply: to what faith? What is the one persuasion that 
gives to human life a worthy aim? Is it the faith of Con- 
fucius, or of Buddha, or of Plato, or of St. Paul, or of 
Savonarola, or of Loyola, or of Luther, or of Calvin, or 
of Wesley, or of Lessing, or of Kant, or of Fichte, or of 
Emerson, or of Schopenhauer, or of Spencer, or of Cardi- 
nal Newman, or of Auguste Comte? These names stand, 
some indeed, near together, but others not for small dif- 
ferences of opinion, but for widely distinct mountain 
peaks of human faith, separated sometimes by dreadful 
abysses of doubt. Which shall you ascend? Merely the 
one at whose base you happen to have been born? Where 
shall you find an abiding place? If you say, but some of 
these leaders are in close agreement, some are disciples of 
others, I reply well and good, but some are so far from 
the others that there is no understanding, almost no 
tolerance possible. Surely, there are some great highest 
beliefs that are worthy of intelligent following on the 
part of all men. But what are those beliefs? How do 
you know what they are till you examine, and examine 
not with a foregone conclusion awaiting you smilingly at 
the other end of a course of reasoning upon which you 
start already convinced, but with genuine skepticism 
that refuses to be satisfied with anything short of rea- 
soned conviction. 

I have touched upon something that really involves 
the whole nature of this work of truth-seeking. I have 
said that there is incongruity in accepting a faith as true 


DOUBTING AND WORKING 337 


simply because you happen to feel it agreeable or satis- 
fying to even your highest interests, for other men have 
felt other opposing faiths equally satisfying. What faith 
is there that is not regarded as cold and dreary, as op- 
posed to the highest nature of man, by one who fails to 
sympathize with it? What earnest and conscientious 
faith is there that may not seem inspiring to the one who 
has formed or accepted it? There are limits no doubt. 
There are earnest faiths that are unable to give comfort 
to the possessors. But that fact of itself is no test of 
truth. For what was our object in setting out to search 
for truth at all? Our starting point, you remember, was 
the fact of the narrowness of all men, of their powerless- 
ness to see beyond a very limited range. The narrowness 
resulted in strife. This strife of opinion meant discon- 
tent. Now, what would be the abiding and satisfactory 
truth if we found it? Evidently, this truth would have 
one great characteristic. It would be of a nature to de- 
mand acceptance from all men. It would be the one 
faith opposed to the many opinions, and certain to con- 
quer them. It would be the one reality that could wait 
for ages for a discoverer. So, at least, we suppose. That 
is our ideal of truth. What, then, is the practical aim in 
seeking for truth? Evidently, the practical aim is to 
harmonize the conflicting opinions of men, to substitute 
for the narrowness and instability of personal views the 
broadness of view that should characterize the free man. 
And so we come to the real core of the matter. You may 
not, you dare not, if it is your vocation, to think at all — 
you dare not accept a faith simply for the satisfaction it 
gives you. You dare not, I say, because as a thinker 
your true aim is not to please yourself, but to work for 
the harmonizing of the views of mankind, to do your 
part in a perfectly unselfish task. This is the one great 


338 DOUBTING AND WORKING 


argument against all uncritical faith. If you accept an 
opinion because it seems pleasing to you before criticism, 
then you choose rather your selfish satisfaction than the 
good of mankind. You ought to work not to increase the 
variety of human opinions, to render closer the limits of 
personal experience, but to extend the field of harmony 
and to unite men, so that they may cease their endless 
warfare and have a common experience. The sight, I 
say, of the mass of conflicting opinions of men in the 
world ought to nerve one to do his best in a task that 
interests all men, that needs the combined efforts of 
millions, and that needs above all the sacrifice of per- 
sonal comfort. Your faith seems agreeable to you — 
well and good. Other men’s faith seems agreeable to 
them. Is this lack of sympathy, this strife of opinions, 
with all the intolerance that springs from it, a good 
thing? No, indeed! Then, ought you to increase it by 
simply staying blindly shut up in your owh narrow 
faith? No, this is selfish. For your own comfort you will 
then sacrifice the good you might do to the world by 
joining the great company of the honest doubters, whose 
end is to reach a universal and abiding human creed. 
But, you say, is it not true that all opinions are finally 
accepted because they are satisfying to some mental 
want? Yes, and this is the real meaning of the doctrine 
that we seek for truth, because we believe truth to be 
good. Our highest object of search is no doubt some 
state of consciousness. Our universal creed, if ever 
reached, will be universally acceptable to the real in- 
tellectual needs of all men educated up to its level. But 
this does not mean that what 1s acceptable to my intel- 
lectual needs must be the truth. My needs are narrow 
and changing. It is humanity in its highest development 
to which the truth will be acceptable. I must give up my 


DOUBTING AND WORKING 339 


desires that the unity of all human spirits may be sooner 
attained. For the sake of perfect tolerance, I must be 
perfectly critical of myself. I must doubt, in order that 
by doubting and working I may bring, perhaps, not my- 
self to certainty, but mankind a little nearer to the | 
truth. 

But this assumption we still are making that truth is 
a good thing, what is the sense of that? Must we not 
assume at the outset something as already certain about 
the world we live in? Must we not assume that the 
world is a good world, and the truth by nature so satis- 
fying that it is worth while for each and all to make great 
sacrifice therefor? And is this not a creed, a faith some- 
what vague, but very intense? How can we say that we 
are to begin by doubting everything when we do not 
doubt that it is worth while to search for truth? I re- 
ply, at the outset we are not certain that it will turn out 
worth while to search for truth. We doubt that as well 
as everything else. But consider: Our condition is not 
this, that being possessed of a good in itself satisfactory, 
we leave this good without knowing whether we are to 
reach anything better. If that were what we did, we 
might be wrong. On the contrary, what we do is to flee 
from an evil condition in which we are. We know that 
difference of opinion, and narrowness of view, and in- 
tolerance are bad. We know that even if we individually 
are content with our creed, the mass of mankind, being 
of different creed, is in a pitiable condition of error or 
doubt. In the service of humanity, then, we must seek 
to get rid of this evil, and our only way of being certain 
that we are doing the best work of which we are capable 
is to begin with universal and genuine doubt. Now, in- 
deed, we cannot be sure that by taking this, the only 
right course, we shall be successful. The search for 


340 DOUBTING AND WORKING 


truth, though prosecuted earnestly and in the best 
spirit known to us, may be a fruitless search. But our 
object is good. We do not seek that profitless duplica- 
tion of the world by a copy in our own souls of which 
Lotze spoke. Against that kind of truth-seeking his 
argument is conclusive. No; in seeking truth we want 
to make human life better, because we see that men 
want large-mindedness and peace, while error means 
narrow-mindedness and war. Since our object is good, 
we have not first to ask whether we are certain of getting 
it. Our business is to do what we can, and fail if we 
must. Truth-seeking is merely like the rest of life —a 
search after ideal goods that are perhaps unattainable, 
a conflict in which victory is never secure so long as life 
itself lasts. Therefore, without contradiction we can say 
that we set out on the search for truth, doubting even 
whether our search will turn out profitable, but feeling 
sure that it is morally required. We determine that 
there shall be significant truth. We are not sure a priori 
that there is any attainable. 

But, you say, then at the outset we at least know that 
we ought to do what is right — that we ought, for ex- 
ample, to serve mankind as best we can by our thoughts 
as by our actions. I reply, you cannot be said to know 
at the outset that it is well to do right and to serve man- 
kind. I suppose only that you feel that it is excellent or 
desirable to do right and to serve mankind. If you 
choose to be selfish, and to do your thinking solely for 
your own amusement, I cannot prove to you, at least at 
the beginning, that you ought not to be selfish. It is 
your choice; you are judges. If you want to do good by 
your opinions, then the best way to do good is to ques- 
tion and criticize these opinions unsparingly, to hold 
none of them as opinions sacred. That you should think 


DOUBTING AND WORKING 341 


it a desirable thing to do good to mankind, how am I, 
how is any one else, to bring you to this point by ar- 
gument? Your moral judgments belong to you in par- 
ticular, and are not convictions about the world, but 
expressions of your own character. 

In what spirit we should search for truth has been at 
some length discussed. It remains for us to consider 
very briefly the immediate consequences of truth-seek- 
ing. They have been indicated in what has been already 
said. First, we have seen that the purpose of truth- 
seeking is the aiding in the great process of emancipating 
men’s minds from those states of narrowness, intolerance 
and instability which are so painful to all concerned. I 
think it wrong to say that in seeking for truth we desire, 
first of all, to duplicate in our own minds the things and 
relations that are outside us. Lotze’s argument is here 
sufficient. The thinking mind ought not to have as its 
sole object conformity to things that do not think. That 
is not our highest aim. Mistake and disagreement and 
cruel intolerance and superstition are evil states of mind. 
They may content or please this or that man for a while. 
They mean injury and anguish to the mass of mankind. 
Therefore the desire for ideal harmony of belief. There- 
fore the unselfish eagerness to be at one with all men by 
making all men at one with what we hold to be true. If 
this is the purpose of our truth-seeking, an evident con- 
sequence is that we ought in fact to reverence the busi- 
ness of truth-seeking as we reverence all toil for the good 
of mankind. We ought to regard truth-seeking as a 
sacred task. Perhaps it is our calling to do good in other 
ways than by truth-seeking. Let us, however, in that 
case see in the truth-seeker, a fellow-worker, and honor 
an earnest and thorough-going doubter as we honor any 
one who undertakes a painful task for the good of his 


342 DOUBTING AND WORKING 


fellows. For honest and thorough-going doubters are 
much rarer than you might suppose. 

Another consequence is this, that we must be content 
to take a very subordinate place in the great work of hu- 
man thought, and to concentrate our attention on a 
small part only of the field of truth. As millions of brains 
must toil doubtless for centuries before any amount of 
ideal agreement among men is attained or even approxi- 
mated, we must be content if we do very little and work 
very hard. We can be tolerably certain that in a world 
where so much is ‘dark nearly the whole of our labor will 
be wasted. But this is natural. There is the delight of 
activity in truth-seeking; but when you compare your 
hopes and claims with the shadowy and doubtful results 
that you will probably reach, or with the exact but very 
modest conclusions to which, if you are a successful 
scientific investigator, you may in time be led, the 
comparison cannot seem otherwise than melancholy. 
Through the failures of millions of devoted servants, the 
humanity of the future may possibly (we cannot know 
that it will certainly) be led to a grand success. This 
far-off divine event to which, for all we know, the whole 
creation may be moving, but which at any rate we re- 
gard with longing and delight, constitutes the whole end 
and aim of our action. It is good to strive. 

But I must conclude this imperfect study of a great 
subject. We began with the fact that every individual is 
a creature of peculiar constitution, with possibly indef- 
initely great idiosyncrasies of senses and feeling. We 
have been led from this on to think of ideal truth as it 
would appear in the mind of one who was not bound by 
accidents of sense and emotion to a narrow range of 
conflicting opinions. To approach this perfect individ- 
ual, I have said that we must begin our efforts with con- 


DOUBTING AND WORKING 343 


scientious and thorough-going doubt of all that we find 
uncriticized and yet claiming authority in our minds. I 
have tried to justify this doubting by showing that it is 
not merely a privilege, but a duty, of any one who pro- 
poses to do the least bit of genuine thinking for the good 
of his fellow-creatures. 

I have stated at length the argument according to 
which at least our religious persuasions, as the expres- 
sions of the highest needs of our minds, must be ex- 
empted from even provisional doubts. In answer to 
this argument, I have tried to show that in so far as 
one’s own comfort is concerned, truth-seeking ought not 
to regard personal comfort at all, and that in so far as 
humanity is concerned, religious beliefs can be made in 
the highest sense useful only when they have stood the 
test of doubt and study. As my discussion is purely 
general, I would not be understood as bringing the least 
material argument to bear against the particular con- 
victions of anybody. If you have reasoned fairly and 
earnestly, have criticized conscientiously, and still re- 
tain your religious belief, you have no doubt a glorious 
possession, worth far more than it ever could have been 
worth to you if you had not reasoned about it. Perhaps 
you are still in error. Perhaps the highest truth is al- 
ready within your grasp, and you have solved in your 
own person the puzzles of ages. If so, you are to be con- 
gratulated. Your treasure is worth more to you than all 
the wealth in the world would be. But remember, no 
man liveth to himself. Remember your duty to man- 
kind. Remember that your personal satisfaction with 
your creed is nothing, your desire to bring all mankind 
to the truth everything. Never rest quiet with your 
belief, therefore, until every means has been taken by 
you to purify it from all taint of your own narrow- 


344 DOUBTING AND WORKING 


mindedness. If any one of us has so purified his belief, 
he is, 1 am persuaded, the greatest genius that the world 
ever saw. If he has not, it is his duty in the service of 
humanity to be in so far skeptical. If he has attained 
the perfect belief, then he must never rest in his efforts 
to teach it to others. I should fear as a general thing to 
have power given me to ordain for other human beings 
what their lives should be. But I wish that just for this 
moment it were given me to summon every man to a 
calling that should remain his calling for life, and to 
which he should willingly devote himself. I should sum- 
mon every one to a life of unswerving devotion to this 
one end — the making of human life broader, fuller, 
more harmonious, better possessed of abiding belief. As 
it is, I can only recommend that you be ceaselessly ac- 
tive for this great end. And as for the end itself, I know 
not if it will ever be attained in any great measure, but 
I know that if it ever is attained it will be by the self- 
sacrifice of countless millions, who, through their own 
failures, shall secure the success of those that come after 
them. 


HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 
[ 1882 ] 


A PERSON for whose opinions I have much re- 
Aw once said to me, that he disclaimed all re- 
sponsibility for the beliefs that he held on certain 

very important matters. 

“T try,” said he, “to conquer prejudice; but having 
done this, I can do no more. My belief, whatever it is, 
forms itself in me. I look on. My will has nothing to do 
with the matter. I can will to walk or eat; but I cannot 
will to believe. I might as well will that my blood should 
eirculates 

Now, as I admire not a little some of the beliefs of the 
person mentioned, I was disappointed to find him not 
responsible for them. It seemed a pity to regard his 
faith as no more creditable to him than the strong 
boughs are creditable to the oak that they adorn. But 
upon this matter I did not agree with my friend. Despite 
his disclaimer, I thought, and yet think, that he has 
made his beliefs very much for himself, and that these 
beliefs do him honor, as the statue does honor to the 
artist that chiseled it. To be sure, my friend did not 
hew out his beliefs from a wholly passive material, as the 
sculptor hews from marble. But his beliefs, as I think, 
resulted from a sort of struggle between him and the 
surrounding world. The world tried sometimes to check 
his thought, and to confine it to one channel; sometimes 
to confuse his thought, and to scatter it into spray be- 
fore the quick heavy blows of innumerable disconnected 
sense apparitions. But my friend was a man of energy, 
and controlled the current of his thought. He fought 
hard, now for freedom from oppressive narrowness of 


346 HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 


thought, now for wholeness and unity of thought; and 
he has in so far conquered as to be the master of a very 
manly and many-sided system of doctrine. I think him 
responsible for this system; and I think that neither he 
nor any other person having the least influence with 
younger truth-seekers ought to think or speak slight- 
ingly of the personal factor that has so large a power in 
forming every man’s creed. As a man is, so he thinks. 
The only absolute truth of which we mortals seem to 
have any clear notion would be found in a perfect agree- 
ment of all rational beings with one another; and this 
agreement would simply express the fact that we were 
all in perfect moral harmony. Our beliefs are, therefore, 
in part the expression of our own will; and nobody can 
justly disclaim responsibility for his creed. He must be 
judged by the earnestness, the aim, the success of the 
efforts that he has made in struggling with his own ex- 
perience to produce this creed. 

Setting out with such a notion about the nature of be- 
lief, one is forthwith confronted by the objector who 
calls for the “facts.” Are our beliefs actually formed 
through our interference? Does our will, our personal 
activity, have any large share in building our faith? 
And is such interference, where it exists, justified? 

May the reader pardon our boldness in asking him to 
consider with us these matters, until we have shown him 
some of the ways in which our own personal activity is 
constantly interfering to form or to modify our simplest 
as well as our most complicated beliefs. The importance 
of the matter may excuse us for troubling the reader just 
now, and we promise to confine our attention to simple 
illustrations, saying in this article as little as possible 
about the deeper metaphysical aspect of our problem. 
Our purpose is a practical one. We wish to suggest the 


HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 347 


responsibility that a man has for his creed as well as for 
his conduct. We shall do this by pointing out that the 
formation of a creed is a part of conduct. And this we 
shall show by illustrating the way in which, whether one 
directs the process or not, one is at all times reacting 
upon what experience puts into his mind, so as to build 
for himself what mere experience could never give. If 
this is true, then it follows that we are in duty bound to 
direct this natural process in the way that seems to us 
morally best. 

Every one recognizes that at least our more abstract 
knowledge depends largely upon our own mental activ- 
ity. Knowing is not mere passive reception of facts or 
of truths. Learning is not solely an affair of the mem- 
ory. The man who without reflection commits things 
to memory is justly compared to a parrot, and might 
yet more justly be compared to the sponge of Hamlet’s 
figure: “‘It is but squeezing you,and sponge, you shall be 
dry again.”’ No knowledge, then, without active hospi- 
tality in the mind that receives the knowledge. But as 
soon as we recognize in mental life this our power to 
modify our knowledge by means of our own activity, 
just so soon do all the old comparisons of the mind to a 
wax tablet, to a sheet of paper, or to other like passive 
subjects of impression lose for us their meaning. Mental 
life becomes for us, in view of these facts, a field of con- 
stant activity. The commonest processes of knowledge 
acquire a new significance. 

Let us begin our study of this activity with a distinc- 
tion. Two kinds of activity are concerned in the at- 
tainment of knowledge. One kind consists in simply 
receiving impressions from without, such as sensations, 
or, ona higher plane, statements of truth, the other con- 
sists in modifying and in organizing these impressions. 


348 HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 


First, then, the receptive activity is partly a physical 
activity, since the one who receives information must 
use his eyes and ears, must keep awake, must at times 
move about; and this receptive activity is also partly 
made up of the mechanical processes of the memory. 
Association by contiguity, or learning by rote, is in the 
main a receptive process, though this process of recep- 
tion requires some active effort on the part of the re- 
ceiver. Committing words and sentences to memory 1s 
often hard labor, as we all of us learned when we first 
were tortured with ill-wrought geographies and gram- 
mars, or with merciless Latin declensions and conjuga- 
tions. But of the whole of this receptive activity I shall 
make no further mention in this essay. Simply receiv- 
ing, keeping your mind in a submissive attitude, direct- 
ing your eyes in the proper direction, using your ears, 
writing down your notes, memorizing whatever needs 
memorizing — all this is essential to knowledge, but has 
no reactive effect, does not modify the form or the mat- 
ter of your knowledge. Secondly, however, knowledge 
is determined for each of us by his own reaction upon 
what he receives; and this second mentioned kind of 
mental activity, that which forms the subject of the 
present paper, consists in a modification as well as in an 
organization of what we have received from without. 
All processes of reasoning, and so all original discoveries 
in science and in philosophy, all speculations, theories, 
dogmas, controversies, and not only these complex proc- 
esses, but, as we shall see, even simple judgments, 
commonplace beliefs, momentary acts of attention — 
involve such independent reaction upon the material 
furnished to us from without. The nature of this re- 
action we are to examine. 

Let us begin with simpler forms of knowledge. Sense- 


HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 349 


impressions constantly suggest to us thoughts; in fact, 
we have few thoughts that are not either immediately 
suggested by sense-impressions, or else sustained in their 
course by a continuous stream of suitable sense-impres- 
sions. 

To carry on a train of even the most abstract reason- 
ing, I must keep my eye on some diagram, or on a for- 
_ mula; or, perhaps, closing my eyes, I must look stead- 
fastly with the mental eye at imaginary forms and colors, 
or must listen to imagined words. Thus, either the pres- 
ent sense-impression, or the memory of a sense-impres- 
sion,is something essential to the keeping up of a train of 
thought. But now, how does the sense-impression go to 
form knowledge? What transforms it into knowledge? 

The answer is, first of all, attention, an active mental 
process. The sense-impression is itself not yet knowl- 
edge. A sense-impression to which we give no attention 
slips through consciousness as a man’s hand through 
water. Nothing grasps and retains it. No effect 1s pro- 
duced by it. It is unknown. You cannot even tell what 
itis. For to know what such an unnoticed impression 1s, 
would be to pay attention to it. But let us now con- 
sider some familiar examples of the working of attention. 
A simple instance will bring home to us how the boun- 
daries of our consciousness are crowded with unknown 
impressions — unknown, because not attended to; but 
yet in some inexplicable way a part of our consciousness, 
since an effort of attention serves to bring them, any one 
of them, clearly into mental vision. At this instant you 
are looking at something. Now without moving your 
eyes, try, by merely attending to your visual impressions 
to say what is now in the field of vision, and where 1s the 
boundary line of the field of vision. The experiment is a 
little hard, because our eyes, condensed embodiments as 


350 HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 


they are of tireless curiosity, are always restless, and 
rebel when you try to hold them fast. But conquer them 
for an instant, and watch the result. As your attention 
roams about the artificially fixed visual field, you will at 
first, indeed, be confused by the vagueness of all but the 
center; but soon you will find, to your surprise, that 
there are more different impressions in the field than you 
at first can distinguish. One after another, many various 
impressions will appear. But notice: you can keep your 
attention fixed on only a portion of the field at a time. 
The rest of the field is always lost in a dim haze. You 
must be receiving impressions all the time from all 
points of the field. But all of these, ‘except the few to 
which you pay attention, nearly or quite disappear in 
the dim thickets that seem to surround the little forest- 
clearing made by our attentive consciousness. A like 
experiment can be tried with the sense of hearing, when 
you are in a large room full of people who are talking all 
around you in many independent groups. A mass of 
sound comes to your ear. Consciousness interferes to 
make you pick out one or another of the series of sounds, 
an act which is indeed made possible by the natural 
analytic tendency of the human auditory sense, but 
which does not take place without a noticeable effort of 
attention. When you are learning a foreign language, 
and are for a while much among those who speak it, 
there comes a time when your ear and mind are well 
enough trained to follow and understand ordinary 
speakers with only a little effort of attention; but yet, 
at this stage, you are able, by simply withdrawing your 
attention a mere trifle, to let very common phrases run 
through your sense without your understanding them 
one whit. You can thus, by a slight change of attention, 
convert the foreign language from a jargon into a fa- 


HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 351 


miliar speech, and back again into a jargon; just as, in 
the fixed visual field, you can make yourself see an ob- 
ject pretty plainly, or lose it altogether by ceasing to 
give attention. 

All these instances, which could be indefinitely multi- 
plied, prove, first, that what we call attention modifies 
the knowledge that we at any moment get; and secondly 
that this modification, through attention, may take 
place without any change in the impressions that at any 
moment come from without. The first stage in getting 
knowledge from bare sense-impressions is, therefore, the 
modification of sense by attention — a process belong- 
ing wholly to the subjective side; 7. e., to our own minds. 

But what is attention? and how does it modify sensa- 
tion? Apparently, attention in the previous instances 
has been merely a power to increase or to diminish the 
intensity of impressions. But is this all that attention 
does? No: there are many cases in which attention 
directly affects the quality, at least of our complex im- 
pressions. This direct modification is commonly at- 
tended by some alteration of our emotional state. It is 
a familiar fact, that in listening to a series of regular and 
even beats, such as the strokes of an engine, or of a pen- 
dulum, or the ticking of a watch, we have a tendency to 
modify the impressions by introducing into their series 
the more elaborate regularity of rhythm. In paying 
attention to them, we increase, at our pleasure, the in- 
tensity of every third or fourth beat as heard, and so 
make a rhythm, or series of measures, out of the actually 
monotonous impressions. Now, attention, which here 
first acts by modifying the intensity of impressions, soon 
produces the effect of qualitatively modifying our total 
impression of the whole series. If I have taken the fancy 
to listen to the even strokes in quadruple time, intensi- 


352 HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 


fying by my own act every fourth stroke, the character 
of the series is changed for me. The impressions are less 
monotonous, and they arouse new associations. They 
seem to be caused by some force that rhythmically in- 
creases and decreases. Perhaps a melody, or some 
phrase of a few words, arises in my mind, and persists 
in associating itself with the strokes. Probably some 
vague feeling, as of rhythmic motion through the air, or 
of pleasure or of displeasure in the presence of some 
rhythmically moving living being, i is awakened. Quali- 
tatively, my consciousness is thus altered through my 
attention. I seem to be experiencing something that, 
as an objective reality, I do not experience. More strik- 
ing becomes this qualitative alteration of experience 
through attention, in case you bring together two 
watches of different beat, or a watch and a clock, and 
listen to both at once at the distance of a few inches, 
first, perhaps, stopping one ear to avoid confusion. 
Here, by attention, you make or try to make a com- 
pound rhythm and this effort alters a good deal the 
total impression that you derive from the sound. If the 
two series are such that a simple small multiple of the 
interval of one gives you a simple small multiple of the 
other’s interval, you can combine the two series into one 
rhythm, and then there is an immediate impression as 
if the two series were really but the complex ticking of 
one source of sound. But if the series will not agree, 
there is an odd sense of something wrong, a disappointed 
effort to combine, joined, as I think I have noticed, with 
a tendency to hasten one of the series, so as to make it 
agree with the other. Another case where attention 
alters the quality of total impressions, and not merely 
the intensity of any part, appears in certain psycho- 
logical laboratory experiments, described by Wundt in 


HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE WSS 


his Phystologische Psychologie. Here, for the sake of de- 
termining the actual time taken by an act of attention, 
an observer is to make an electric signal as soon as he 
becomes conscious of a certain impression, while the im- 
pression itself is produced by an assistant at a time 
exactly determined. The source of the impression is the 
ringing of a bell, the flash of an electric spark, or some- 
thing of the kind, agreed upon at the outset. To dis- 
tinguish from one another the various causes of the 
delay of the signal, the conditions of experiment are vari- 
ously modified. In one set of experiments, the observer 
does not know beforehand whether he is to experience a 
flash of light, or a sound, or some sensation of touch, nor 
how intense the sensation will be, nor when it will come; 
but he knows that he is to be on the lookout for one of 
the three kinds of sensation. He waits, with attention 
all aroused. In this case, it always takes him longer to 
signal than if he knew beforehand the kind and the 
strength of the coming sensation. Moreover, his atten- 
tion now makes him uneasy; the coming sensation 1s ex- 
pected, with signs of excitement, and is often received 
with a start. Here the feeling of effort that accompa- 
nies attention affects by its strength the character of the 
impression received. 

Moreover, in many of these experiments there appear 
phenomena that show that attention alters our percep- 
tion of time, not merely as to length, but also as to se- 
quence; so that, under circumstances, an impression 
that really preceded another can appear in conscious- 
ness as succeeding it. Yet more: attention sometimes 
serves to combine two sets of simultaneous impressions, 
and to make them seem as if proceeding from one source. 
So much for the influence of attention alone. But what 
is attention? We reply, evidently an active process. 


354 HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 


When impressions are modified by attention, they are 
actively modified. And if you ask about the nature of 
this active process, the reply is, attention, in its most 
elementary forms, is the same activity that, in a more 
developed shape, we commonly call will. We attend to 
one thing rather than to another, because we will to do 
so, and our will is here the elementary impulse to know. 
Our attention leads us at times into error. But this 
error is merely an accompaniment, the result of our will 
activity. We want to intensify an impression, to bring 
it within the sphere of knowledge. But in carrying out 
our impulse, we do more than we meant. We not only 
bring something into clearer consciousness that was be- 
fore out of clear consciousness, but we qualitatively 
modify this thing in attending to it. I want to observe 
a series of beats, and in observing it, I make one beat in 
three or four seem heavier than the others, or I even 
alter the apparent length of one interval in three or four, 
by making it seem longer than the others. I observe a 
series of visual impressions, and at the same time a series 
of auditory impressions; if there is a certain agreement 
between them, I irresistibly unite these two series by 
my act of attention into one series, and refer them to a 
common cause. In this way, for example, part of the 
laughable illusion in the sport known as dumb orator is 
produced, where the two series of impressions must have 
some sort of agreement in order to produce the illusion. 
And so in the other cases. Attention seems to defeat, in 
part, its own object. Bringing something into the field 
of knowledge seems to be a modifying, if not a trans- 
forming, process. 

We all know how this same law works on a higher 
plane. Giving our whole attention for a time to a par- 
ticular subject seems necessary for the growth of our 


HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 35.5 


knowledge. Yet such attention, if long kept up, always 
modifies our power to know, affects our whole mental 
condition, and thus injures our power to appreciate the 
relations between the subject of our study and the other 
things in the world. Constant attention to one thing 
narrows our minds, until we fail to see the very thing we 
are looking at. Our lives are thus really passed in a 
constant flitting from one more or less partial and dis- 
torted view of things to another, from this one-sided 
judgment to that. Change the book you are reading, 
and your whole notion of the universe suffers some mo- 
mentary change also. Think this week in the fashion of 
Carlyle, attending to things as he brings them to your 
attention, and human life — in fact, the whole world of 
being as you thought of it last week, when you were 
following some other guide — becomes momentarily 
clouded. This truth seems out of relation to that. Your 
change of attention qualitatively alters your apprehen- 
sion of truth. Attending now even to the same things, 
you view them in new lights. The alteration of mental 
attitude becomes confusing to yourself. But refuse to 
make any such changes, settle down steadfastly to some 
one way of regarding all things, and your world becomes 
yet more misty. You see only a few things, and those in 
such a bad light that you are in danger of utter darkness. 
Frequent change of mental view (I, of course, do not 
mean constant change of creed or of occupation, but 
only frequent alteration of the direction of our thought) 
is essential to mental health. Yet this alteration implies 
at least some temporary change in our knowing powers, 
and so some change in our appreciation of truth. 
Before going on to speak of the effect of our own ac- 
tivity upon our knowledge, when attention is combined 
with active recognition of impressions, I want to formu- 


356 HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 


late the law that governs this action upon sense-impres- 
sions of attention when viewed alone. This law seems 
pretty well established by experience, and is, at all 
events, quite simple. It is this: Any act of attention 
tends, first, to strengthen the particular set of impres- 
sions to which it is at the moment adapted; and secondly 
to modify those impressions in such a way as shall make 
the total impression derived from them all as simple an 
impression as possible. These two statements could be 
reduced to one, thus: Attention constantly tends to 
make our consciousness more definite and less complex; 
that is, less confused, and more united. More definite, 
less confused, attention tends to make consciousness; 
since, out of many vague impressions, attention fixes 
upon one or a few, and helps them to crowd out the 
others. Less complex and more united or integrated 
attention makes the impressions attended to; as when, 
for the indefinite multiplicity of the successive even beats 
of a watch or of an engine, attention substitutes the 
simpler form of a rising and falling rhythm of more and 
less emphatic beats; or, as when two parallel series of 
impressions are reduced to one, by combination. If im- 
pressions are so complex and so imperative in their 
demands as to impede greatly the simplifying and clari- 
fying efforts of attention, the result is a disagreeable 
feeling of confusion, that may increase to violent pain. 
This law, that our consciousness constantly tends to 
the minimum of complexity and to the maximum of 
definiteness, is of great importance for all our knowledge. 
Here we have a limitation that cannot be overleaped. 
Whatever we come to know, whatever opinions we come 
to hold, our attention it is that makes all our knowing 
and all our believing possible; and the laws followed by 
this, our own activity of attention will thus determine 


HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 357 


what we are to know and what we are to believe. If 
things have more than a certain complexity, not only 
will our limited powers of attention forbid us to unravel 
this complexity, but we shall strongly desire to believe 
the things actually much simpler than they are. For 
our thoughts about them will have a constant tendency 
to become as simple and definite as possible. Put a man 
in a perfect chaos of phenomena, sights, sounds, feel- 
ings; and if the man continued to exist, and to be ra- 
tional at all, his attention would doubtless soon find for 
him a way to make up some kind of rhythmic regularity, 
which he would impute to the things about him, so as to 
imagine that he had discovered some law of sequence in 
this mad new world. And thus, in every case where we 
fancy ourselves sure of a simple law of Nature, we must 
remember that a good deal of the fancied simplicity may 
be due, not to Nature, but to the ineradicable prejudice 
of our own minds in favor of regularity and simplicity. 
All our thought is determined, in great measure, by this 
law of least effort, as it is found exemplified in our ac- 
tivity of attention. 

But attention is not the only influence that goes to 
transform sense-impressions into knowledge. Attention 
never works alone, but always in company with the 
active process of recognizing the present as in some way 
familiar, and of constructing in the present ideas of what 
is not present. At these two other active processes we 
must very briefly glance. 

Recognition is involved in all knowledge. Recogni- 
tion does not always mean a definite memory of a par- 
ticular past experience that resembles a present one. 
On the contrary, recognition 1s essentially only a sense 
of familiarity with something now present, coupled with 
a more or less distinct applying of some predicate to this 


358 HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 


present thing. I recognize a horse, a landscape, a star, 
a friend, a piece of music, a book, when I feel more or 
less familiar with the impression of the object in ques- 
tion, and when, at the same time, I predicate more or 
less distinctly something of it. This, I say, is my friend, 
or the north star, or Webster’s Dictionary, or Smith’s 
horse. Or, perhaps, in recognizing, I recognize, not mere- 
ly the whole object, but one of its qualities, or of its rela- 
tions to other things. Then I say, this is large or small, 
good or bad, equal or unequal to another thing, and so 
on. In all these cases, recognition involves a lively re- 
action of my mind upon external impressions. Recogni- 
tion is not found apart from attention, though attention 
may exist more or less completely without recognition. 
Recognition completes what attention begins. The at- 
tentive man wants to know, the recognizing man knows, . 
or thinks he knows. Recognition implies accompanying 
attention. Attention without recognition implies won- 
der, curiosity, perplexity, perhaps terror. But what is 
the law of this process of recognition? Does the process 
affect the impressions themselves that are the basis of 
the recognition? The answer is: Very distinctly, recog- 
nition does affect the impressions. The activity involved 
in recognition alters the data of sense, and that in al- 
most every case. Two of the ways in which this altera- 
tion occurs are these: (1) In recognizing, we complete 
present data by remembered past data, and so seem to 
experience more than is actually given to our senses. 
Thus, then, in reading, we read over misprints (even 
against our own will), thinking that we see words when 
we do not see them, or when we see only parts of them. 
Again: in listening to an indistinct speaker we often 
supply what is lacking in the sounds he makes, and seem 
to hear whole words when we really hear but fragments 


HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 359 


of words. Or, merely whistling a few notes, we recall to 
ourselves, and seem to have present, the complex in- 
strumental harmony of some music that we have heard 
played. Or, in dim twilight, we imagine the form of a 
man, and seem to see it plainly in detail, when, in fact, 
a mass of shrubbery, or a coat on a chair, is the one 
source of our impressions. In all these cases, the activity 
of recognition alters the data of sense, by adding to 
them, by filling out the sketch made by them. (2) How- 
ever, even the qualities of sense-impressions are altered 
according to the way in which we recognize their ob- 
jects. The colors of a landscape are dimmer, and less 
significant as colors, so long as we recognize the objects 
in the landscape. Look under your arm, with head in- 
verted, and the colors flash out with unwonted brilliancy. 
For when you so look, you lose sight of the objects as 
such, and give your attention solely to the colors. Mis- 
take a few brown leaves in some dark corner of a garden 
for some little animal, and the leaves take on for the 
moment the distinctive familiar color of the animal; and 
when you discover your blunder, you can catch the 
colors in the very act of fading into their dull, dry-leaf 
insignificance. Many facts of this sort are recorded by 
psychologists and by artists, and can be observed by any 
of us if we choose. To separate a sensation from its mod- 
ifications that are produced by recognition is not a little 
difficult. 

Now, in both these kinds of alteration a law is ob- 
served, very similar to the one previously noted. The 
alteration of the data of sense in the moment of recog- 
nition are alterations in the direction of simplicity and 
definiteness of consciousness. The present is assimilated 
to the past; the new is made to seem as familiar as pos- 
sible. This reaction of the mind upon new impressions 


360 HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 


is easily seen in our thoughts and words in the first 
moment of great surprise or fright. When Macbeth 
turns from his door to the table, and sees the ghost of 
Banquo in his chair, his first words are not the “ 4vaunt, 
and quit my sight!”’ wherewith he greets the second ap- 
pearance of the ghost, nor yet even the “Which of you 
have done this?” that he utters as soon as he recovers 
himself. No: his first conscious reaction, in presence of 
the horrible impression, is a quiet remark, “ The table’s 
full.’ And when they tell him that there is a place re- 
served, he persists with a “Where?’’ In this scene, 
Shakespeare’s instinct is perfectly accurate. Our effort 
always is to make the new as familiar as possible, even 
when this new is inconceivably strange. It takes us 
some time to realize, as we say, a great change of any _ 
sort. Recognition, however, is yet further modified by 
the interest with which we at any moment attend to 
things. But when we speak of interest, we are led to the 
third kind of active modification by which our minds 
determine for us what we know. 

At every moment we are not merely receiving, attend- 
ing, and recognizing, but we are constructing. Out of 
what from moment to moment comes to us, we are 
building up our ideas of past and future, and of the 
world of reality. Mere dead impressions are given. We 
turn them by our own act into symbols of a real universe. 
We thus constantly react upon what is given, and not 
only modify it, but even give it whatever significance it 
comes to possess. Now this reaction takes a multitude 
of forms, and cannot be fully discussed without far more 
than our present space. But we can name one or two 
prominent modes of reaction of mind upon sense-data 
in this province of mental life. 

1. Definite memory is possible only through present 


HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 361 


active construction from the data of feeling. Nothing 
can come to us certifying for itself that it formed a part 
of our previous experience. When we know a thing as 
past, we actively project our idea of it into a conceived 
past time. Without this active interference of our own 
minds, everything would be but a present, and there 
would be no time for us, only fleeting life from moment 
to moment. 

2. Definite belief in external reality is possible only 
through this active addition of something of our own to 
the impressions that are actually given to us. No ex- 
ternal reality is given to us in the mere sense-impres- 
sions. What is outside of us cannot be at the same time 
within us. But out of what is in us, we construct an idea 
of an external world; and we ourselves give to this idea 
all the validity that for us it can ever have. 

3. All abstract ideas, all general truths, all knowledge 
of necessary laws, all acceptance of doctrines, are, in like 
fashion, an active process coming from within. Change 
the fashions of our mental activity, and nobody can tell 
how radically you would change our whole conception 
of the universe. 

4. Al! this active construction from sense-impres- 
sions expresses certain fundamental interests that our 
human spirit takes in reality. We want to have a world 
of a particular character; and so, from sense-impres- 
sions, we are constantly trying to build up such a world. 
We are prejudiced in favor of regularity, necessity, and 
simplicity in the world; and so we continually manipu- 
late the data of sense for the sake of building up a notion 
of a regular, necessary, and simple universe. And so, 
though it is true that our knowledge of the world is de- 
termined by what is given to our senses, it is equally 
true that our idea of the world is determined quite as 


362 HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 


much by our own active combination, completion, an- 
ticipation of sense-experience. Thus all knowing is, in a 
very deep sense, acting: it is, in fact, reacting and crea- 
tion. The most insignificant knowledge is in some sense 
an original product of the man who knows. In it is ex- 
pressed his disposition, his power of attention, his skill 
in recognition, his interest in reality, his creative might. 
Exact knowledge is, in fact, only possible in cases where 
we ourselves make what we know. So only is mathe- 
matical knowledge possible; for mathematical ideas are 
all products of a constructive imagination. And so it is 
in all other thought-life. Mentally produce, and thou 
shalt know thy product. But remember, for what we 
produce, we are in some sense morally responsible; and 
thus, as we said at the outset, in discussing the nature of 
knowledge, we are trespassing on the borderland of 
ethics. 

We said, at the beginning of our study, that our pur- 
pose is a practical one. We wish to point out the im- 
portance of the active personal factor in the formation 
of belief, and to draw from the facts a moral lesson. And 
what is this lesson? Plainly, since active inner processes 
are forever modifying and building our ideas; since our 
interest in what we wish to find does so much to deter- 
mine what we do find; since we could not if we would 
reduce ourselves to mere registering machines, but re- 
main always builders of our own little worlds — it be- 
comes us to consider well, and to choose the spirit in 
which we shall examine our experience. Every one is 
certain to be prejudiced, simply because he does not 
merely receive experience, but himself acts, himself 
makes experience. The great question for every truth- 
seeker is, In what sense, to what degree, with what mo- 
tive, for what end, may I and should I be prejudiced? 


HOW BELIEFS ARE MADE 363 


Most of us get our prejudices wholly from the fashions 
of other men. This is cowardly. We are responsible for 
our own creed, and must make it by our own hard work. 
Therefore, the deepest and most important of all ques- 
tions is the one, “‘ For what art thou at work?” It is use- 
less to reply, “I am merely noting down what I find in the 
world. I am not responsible for the facts.’ The answer is, 
““A mere note-book thou art not, but a man. These are 
never simply notes; thy thoughts are always trans- 
formed reality, never mere copies of reality. For thy 
transforming activity, as well as for thy skill in copying, 
thou art answerable.” 


A NEGLECTED STUDY 
[ 1890 ] 


\" JE students of philosophy have an old fashion 
of pointing out defects in other men’s knowl- 

edge, and of assigning tasks for our fellows to 

perform. The fashion is old, I say; for it was set by our 
master, Socrates, whose wisdom lay in his well-known 
confession of ignorance, and the equally well-known 
cross-questioning whereby he made plain to his oppo- 
nents in dialogue their own unwisdom and their need of 
sound doctrine. Ever since, philosophical students, not 
always indeed with the Socratic modesty of self-con- 
fession, have loved to point out this or that gap in 
human knowledge, this or that needed and unaccom- 
plished task, which the presumably wider outlook of 
their own professional studies, has, as they pretend, 
enabled them to see in the province of some special pur- 
suit. If in this little paper I venture afresh on such a 
thankless task as this, I can only plead the time-honored 
privilege of my trade. It is a privilege not at all free, of 
course, from its off-setting disadvantages. The philo- 
sophical student, when he accuses any of his fellows in 
some sister art of having left a ripe harvest of truth 
here or there ungarnered, stands himself at the mercy 
of whosoever chooses to retort that philosophy, with all 
its disorganized multitude of opinions and of researches, 
has so far dishearteningly few sheaves of ripe grain to 
show for its toil. A doctrine that consists, so to speak, 
mainly of unaccomplished tasks, may thus appear in an 
evil light when it pretends to criticize the omissions of 
its fellows. But, after all, not recrimination but mutual 
exhortation is the true purpose of students when they 


A NEGLECTED STUDY eh Ris ts 


discourse about the needs and the defects of their va- 
rious branches of research; and it is the privilege of 
philosophy to have acquired, in its long experience of 
unfulfilled hopes, a peculiarly keen sense of what con- 
stitutes unfulfillment in human intellectual efforts. 

The unfulfilled task, the neglected branch of study, 
which this paper wants to point out for the benefit of 
young students who may be wondering what to do with 
their wits, lies at a certain place in the wide field of 
modern Literary Research. In our own language, 
namely, as we shall find, the books that endeavor to 
deal with just this task, in any well-equipped fashion, 
are still surprisingly few. The young students who un- 
derstand the importance of the matter are very hard to 
find. A curious popular prejudice concerning the nature 
and the possibilities of literary research stands mean- 
while stubbornly in the way of the prosperity of the 
branch of investigation to which I refer. But because 
in any case the study that I mean can be more easily 
defined by its spirit and by its purpose than through the 
naming of any list of books, I may as well begin with a 
suggestion, by analogy, of the region of Literary Re- 
search where our neglected study lies. Many scholars, 
indeed, know of this study; some scholars even in our 
midst are lovers of it, and a few may rank as masters in 
its service; but these are indeed few. The multitude 
pass it by without any real comprehension. 

Yet analogy, as I have just said, will suggest at once 
our needed study. Classical Philology, in the time from 
the Renaissance to the beginning of our present century, 
used to consist, as everybody knows, of two main 
branches: one the literary study of classical master- 
pieces for the sake of their beauty and of their wisdom; 
the other, grammatical research into the structure of 


366 AG NEGER CT ED ESmUD Ys 


the classical languages as such. Each of these main 
branches of erudition had its subordinate branches. 
Text-criticism, of the older school, served for instance 
as handmaid to the grammarian. The infant science, 
Archeology, supplemented in a measure the work of 
the student of pure literature. But such subordinate 
branches of study were not only imperfectly developed; 
their very significance and their true aim was not yet 
understood. Only when, at the close of the last century 
and at the beginning of this, the modern historical 
method began that wonderful development which in 
our day has at last borne fruit in the doctrine of evolu- 
tion — only then was it possible for Philology to get the 
definition which, for scholars like Boeckh, ere long be- 
came characteristic. Philology, for such men, meant 
the study of the whole life, of the entire thought and 
civilization of classical antiquity. How fruitful this idea 
of the philologist’s task has become for classical study 
in modern times I may leave for wiser men to describe. 
It is enough for me at present to suggest how much the 
value of those older branches of learning themselves, 
namely, the purely linguistic study of Greek and Latin, 
and the purely esthetic appreciation of the literary 
masterpieces of antiquity, has in fact gained, in recent 
times, through this high ideal of philological scholar- 
ship to which our century has given birth. The gram- 
marian used to be a person whose learned devotion to 
details only his fellows could prize. He seemed to have 
some mysterious passion for particles, for moods and 
tenses, and the rest, purely for their own abstract 
sakes. This passion was his life. It was an end in itself 
to him. 


So with the throttling hands of Death at strife, 
Ground he at grammar; 


A NEGLECTED STUDY 367 


Still thro’ the rattle parts of speech were rife. 
While he could stammer 

He settled Hoti’s business — let it be! 
Properly based Oun — 

Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, 
Dead from the waist down. 


Thus his learning, as Browning’s well-known lines 
suggest, was throughout a determined separation of 
himself from life. 


“Time to taste life,’ another would have said 
“Up with the curtain!” 
This man said rather, “‘Actual life comes next? 
Patience a moment! 
Grant I have mastered learning’s crabbed text, 
Still there’s the comment.” 


Well, the modern classical scholar, on the contrary, 
when he is true to the spirit of his age, seems, as far as I 
have had any chance to observe him, to love no less his 
enclitics, but to love their living meaning more. His 
linguistic study is not an end in itself, so much as a 
contribution towards the fair appreciation of that won- 
derful live thing called the Greek mind — that most 
remarkable of the spontaneous variations to which the 
human type has given birth. The modern classical 
scholar is in fact a biologist, who is studying the variety 
of man called ancient Greek, and the other variety called 
Roman. His interests are essentially the biological, and 
in particular the psychological interests. When he 
studies grammar, he is simply learning about the habits 
of thought which characterized the men whose life he 
tries to read. And when he examines literary master- 
pieces, his scientific aim 1s still the same. He does not 
abstract the esthetic from the other vitally significant 
aspects of literature. Such abstraction would in his 


368 A NEGLECTED STUDY 


eyes be an absurdity. And yet the men who in former 
centuries enjoyed the “elegance”’ of their Horace, and 
the “nobility”’ of their Sophocles (as of course they had 
every right to do), used too often to make just such an 
absurd abstraction. They used to conceive that you 
read Horace or Sophocles either for “polite” enjoyment, 
or e/se for grammatical exercise. The two thus narrowly 
defined aims hindered each other. That true literary 
enjoyment is heightened, not hindered, by a deeper 
comprehension of the temperament whose products you 
are enjoying; and that grammatical rules are merely a 
means of getting at the habits of the language-using 
animal to whom belonged this temperament — all this 
the older scholars, so far as I understand their point of 
view, used too often to forget. In short, then, the ideal 
of modern classical philology is, I apprehend, something 
of this kind: — The remarkable variety of the homo 
sapiens whose habits of doing and of thinking were em- 
bodied in the monuments of classical antiquity, needs 
to be comprehended, just as any other animal needs to 
be comprehended, by studying his temperament and his 
peculiar vital processes. Only, just this variety of live 
creature chances to have been peculiarly thoughtful, 
significant, productive. So fine a tone of brain-cortex 
functioning has never elsewhere appeared on our planet. 
Therefore it is that all the characteristic habits of the 
Greek are worthy of so much study. Therefore it is that 
his oun’s and his de’s, and his an’s, his -optatives, his 
subjunctives, and his composite words, deserve such 
elaborate scrutiny. Linguistic study is justified by its 
place among the biological sciences. The reflexes of the 
Hellenic speech centers are very highly noteworthy 
phenomena in human psychology. And, even so, the 
products of Greek literary art, the wonderful master- 


A NEGLECTED STUDY 369 


pieces themselves, must be examined with a truly schol- 
arly seriousness and minuteness. The genuine literary 
student is no man of “polite” leisure, who merely 
glances about him and gracefully estimates this or that. 
He, too, is a psychologist. His calling is one with that 
of the true grammarian. They are both equally philol- 
ogists, because they are both equally engaged in a 
psychological study of the life of antiquity. Literary 
enjoyment is, or ought to be ves severa. You enjoy only 
what you comprehend. You comprehend only what 
you grasp in its relations, see as a symptom of the life 
whereof it formed part, lovingly and minutely scrutinize, 
patiently follow into all its windings and its intricacies. 
To be sure, where the task is so vast there has to be di- 
vision of labor. One philologist gets his revelations 
concerning ancient life rather from av and the optative; 
another is devoted to choral metres and to verse trans- 
lations; a third is an archeologist; a fourth drinks in his 
literary knowledge in long draughts of continuous read- 
ing, and seems fitted to be rather the general historian 
than the linguist. But all know that their “division” 
must not mean real separation, that each depends on 
his fellows, that they are at work upon a common task, 
and that this common task is the one called Philological 
Research. 

Our analogy is thus before us. I must apologize to the 
classical philologists, should any of them glance at this 
paper, for my layman’s effort to describe their spirit. 
I aim only to cite their very instructive example. And 
now for our neglected study. What I miss in recent 
scholarship in this country, as well as in England, is a 
sufficiently serious and thorough-going effort to study 
modern literature, and, above all, English Literature 
itself, in this truly philological spirit. Ask a young stu- 


370 A’ NEGLECTED STUDY 


dent of today what is meant by English Philology, and 
he too often answers, “Anglo-Saxon and Early English 
studied in a purely linguistic fashion.”” Now I am far 
from venturing, or from even faintly wishing, to make 
light of two such important branches of philological 
study as Anglo-Saxon and Early English. Only if I 
asked any one to point out to me a horse, and he in- 
sisted upon showing me the horse’s hind legs, and upon 
assuring me that they were the only true animal, I 
should be puzzled. And to my mind it is not any dis- 
paragement of the hind legs to insist that a knowledge 
of their anatomy is but a small part of the composition 
of the true horse, necessary part though it be. English 
Philology, I apprehend, is an organic science, whose pur- 
pose is the study of the English mind in its wholeness. 
Like Classical Philology, this is one of the biological 
sciences, and in particular it 1s a branch of psychology. 
Its task, like that of any other biological science, is one 
of endless wealth and variety, demands therefore, end- 
less division of labor, and specialization of studious 
functions. But complete separation of studies is never 
the aim of science. Differentiation must not mean iso- 
lation. And what I complain of in many of our younger 
students of English “Philology” is not that their lin- 
guistic work is unimportant, but that they themselves 
fail to realize its importance, because they have so little 
comprehension of the unity of philology as a whole. 
These young linguists sometimes (I speak now of the 
youth only) pride themselves upon their entire separa- 
tion from the superficial persons who are “only literary 
students,’ or who are “light literary critics’? — to use 
a phrase that a certain linguistic specialist in England 
once, in an unhappy moment of wrath and chagrin, 


applied to Mr. Lowell himself. Ah, this idea of the 


AS NEGLEGTEDYSTUDY B71 


“lightness” of literary criticism — what mischief has it 
not caused! Is life so very “light” an affair? And whose 
task is weightier than is that of the man who undertakes 
to gauge the very issues of life themselves, and the works 
that embody these issues? In any case, however, 
nothing is more degrading to the true dignity of the 
linguist’s task than this self-imposed separation of his 
interests from the “purely literary” interests. As if, I 
repeat, the laws of language were anything but a record 
of the habits of the speaking animal, and as if such 
records were anything but one means more of compre- 
hending that very humanity whose vital passions pro- 
duce literature, and give to it its worth. Meanwhile, of 
course, the “purely literary students” often suffer 
equally from their acceptance of this separation. They 
fancy that scholarship in these matters means only 
crabbed linguistic study. Their own pursuits become 
fragmentary, inorganic, unworthy of serious men. If 
the young linguists confine themselves to the anatomy 
of the horse’s hind legs, after he is dead, the “purely 
literary students” content themselves with admiring his 
contour, and betting on his wind and his speed, so long 
as he is alive. This constitutes their “literary criticism.” 
Meanwhile nobody amongst them all, young “lin- 
guists” or young “critics” really loves the horse well 
enough to desire to study his whole structure, his vital 
processes, his reflexes, his instincts, his habits, his an- 
cestry, and his evolution, with anything of the biolo- 
gist’s comprehensiveness and devotion. And so our 
horse remains essentially an unknown creature. 

“But surely,” one may retort to all this, “it does not 
need an article like the present one to point out, even to 
young men, the importance of a true study of the Eng- 
lish mind in its wholeness. All our greater critics, all our 


gp: A NEGLECTED STUDY 


more ambitious historians in recent times, have they 
not pointed out to us in a hundred ways that history 
deals with human evolution, that literary history is a 
part of this general study of evolution, and that English 
literature, if only any one man could learn the whole 
truth about it, ought to be capable of furnishing im- 
portant contributions to such a study? Who, indeed, 
that lives in the great Age of Evolution, should fail to 
appreciate this fact?” The trouble, it will be said, lies 
then, in the complexity of the subject itself. A man 
must specialize; and one man loves his Anglo-Saxon, an- 
other his Lake Poets. Nobody can contribute very 
much to so vast a task. Let each do what he can. 

I answer, what I am pleading for is a spirit of study, 
not the learning of any one group of facts. And what I 
point out is that, despite frequent and varied and au- 
thoritative insistance upon just the truths upon which I 
here insist, the particular spirit which I advocate still 
remains unknown to a great part of our studious Amer- 
ican public. How much is yet to be done in the way of a 
genuine history of the life and thought of the English 
people! How little does a student who, like myself, 
occasionally needs for professional purposes special in- 
struction as to the history of the great English Moral 
Ideas and Ideals, find to aid him in our libraries! Essays 
of fragmentary and capricious literary criticism, am- 
bitious failures like the magnificently planned and hope- 
lessly unsuccessful book of Taine, numberless biographi- 
cal sketches, of every degree of power and skill, large 
collections of raw material, and finally elaborate para- 
sitical growths such as the mass of literary industry that 
has grown up at Shakespeare’s expense: such are the 
treasures of wisdom that offer themselves to whoever 
seeks for light as to the evolution of English Literature 


A NEGLECTED STUDY 373 


in its wholeness. I do not want to speak ill of this 
colossal mass of material. But what I do often want to 
find in it is guidance — guidance as to the meaning, the 
causation, the relationships of English thought and 
passion. And such guidance I in great measure miss, 
because so few even of our best literary critics, and even 
of our wisest scholars, have clearly conceived of such a 
thing as Modern Philology, whose ideal should be 
formed after the analogy of the ideal of Classical Philol- 
ogy whereof I spoke above. I do not demand the im- 
possible. I do not hope that anybody can as yet succeed 
in accomplishing the task which Taine set himself, the 
task of writing a Philosophy of the History of English 
Literature. For the conquest of so vast a field the time 
is not yet come, nor can it soon come. But what I wish 
is that the true spirit of modern philological research 
should prosper amongst a large body of our young stu- 
dents, and that this false and lamentable and absurd 
opposition which nowadays keeps asunder the men who 
are devoted to what they call English Philology, and the 
men who are “purely literary students,” should give 
place to a cordial codperation in the one task of com- 
prehending the English mind as it has existed in all its 
successive periods. 

That I long to see similar methods applied to the 
whole study of modern literature, I have already sug- 
gested. I think that a failure to understand the one 
duty of the philologist, which, is, through Joh “‘lin- 
quistic”’ and “‘literary” study, to come nearer to a 
comprehension of Mind, is responsible in large part for 
the condition of public opinion which, in our day and 
country, encourages the “light literary critic” to accept 
the supposed limitations of his calling, and to become 
rather a doctrinaire than a sincere and laborious student 


374 A NEGLECTED STUDY 


of human nature. The literary critic is, forsooth, not to 
be a “scholar.”” A “scholar” is a grammarian who 
knows about Greek particles, or about Anglo-Saxon, or 
about Ulfilas. As of course there can be nothing thus 
“scholarly” about novel reading or about a knowledge 
of Browning or of Shelley, the “purely literary man” 
must needs do something else than be learned. He must 
rather be “authoritative,” 7.¢., self-confident, dog- 
matic. He must “lead a movement,” or at any rate 
follow one. Hence, the public wants to know to what 
“school”’ he belongs. Is he a pessimist, or a follower of 
Tolstoi, or a believer in Ibsen, or a hater of the realistic 
novel writers? Best of all, if he is a “literary man” and 
still wants to seem a very serious person, a “leader”’ in 
the imposing sense — best of all is it for him nowadays 
to concern himself with some burning “social question.” 
He must be a socialist, or organize a reform society of 
some sort, or write on the New South. Anything will do, 
if so be only that it is zo¢ an effect to comprehend the 
life of man through studious literary research (for there 
is no studious literary research but that of the linguist!). 
The “purely literary man” must inflict his whims, his 
prejudices, on the world, unless indeed he is able to get 
the world to read his poems, when he will become a pro- 
ductive artist and pass to a higher plane. So long as he 
remains a “‘critic”’ he has nothing to do but to be either 
“light,” or “prophetic,” and in any and every case to 
be whimsical rather than scholarly. In consequence he 
too often sees little, because he is so anxious to become 
independently luminous on his own account. His office 
is not to be one of discernment, but of a sort of phos- 
phorescent literary glowing whereby attention shall be 
attracted to himself. 

It is this glow-worm life, to which, in the absence of 


A NEGLECTED STUDY 375 


scholarly ideals, many, especially of our younger literary 
critics, are nowadays condemned, that is responsible for 
the “crazes”’ which at the moment are the curse of our 
American literary life. The “craze” that makes Brown- 
ing or Ibsen or any other literary man a solitary idol, is 
a symptom of a condition of intelligence for which liter- 
ature in its true sense 1s as good as non-existent. For 
the solitary idol is no organic part of literature; nor is he 
studied with any truly psychological concern. To your 
“Browningite,’’ Browning is not a live creature, splen- 
did in vigor, and with all the finely stubborn and obvi- 
ous defects of a very manly and original temperament 
— a live creature, to be first studied with all a natural- 
ists’ devotion and ¢hen criticized, precisely as he used to 
criticize others, with a healthy man’s freedom of re- 
action. No, Browning is a sublime sort of person, called 
a seer, and this, in the minds of the average Browning- 
ites, who have no idea of psychological types, and who 
would not know a live seer from a handsaw if they met 
one — this means that Browning stands for a creed, a 
doctrine, an elaborate system, a revelation. This creed 
you first accept with awe. Then you proceed to find out 
what itis. Browning’s mysteries dawn upon you slowly. 
The actual behavior in verse of the man Browning, 
passionate, whimsical, romantic, humane, capricious, 
wise, and exasperating, as he was — this you are not 
concerned to study, as he studied his Men and Women, 
namely with a loving eye for their very crudities and 
narrownesses as well as for their heroic qualities. For 
the true philologist would indeed look upon Browning 
much as Browning looked upon his fellowmen; namely 
with a keen scrutiny and an unsparing but humane est1- 
mate of faults. As for Browning himself, few men have 
as it were, more frankly confessed their literary faults 


376 A NEGLECTED STUDY 


to the world, have more pressed them upon the reader’s 
notice. Browning’s greatest fault was his capriciousness; 
and this he is constantly confessing. His creed mean- 
while is an extremely short and simple one, which needs 
no clubs to expound it. Few men have had a more child- 
like depth and clearness of faith. His verse is obscure 
mainly because he chose to amuse himself by making it 
so. Nobody could write simpler and warmer lyrics than 
he; nobody of his rank has ever chosen to torment his 
readers with as many caprices. This capricious tempera- 
ment of Browning’s.is, however, for this very reason, so 
much the more fascinating in its paradoxes to the lover 
of original types. Would that we had more such lovers 
amongst us. As it is, the question: “How do you view 
Browning?’’ means to most minds: “Do you or do you 
not accept the mysterious, profound, and obscure thing 
called the Teaching of Browning?” What the question 
ought to mean would be “Have you yet found:time to 
become acquainted with the type called Browning?” — 
a splendid, manly, modern type, whereof God found 
room for only one example; while nobody need wish, in 
a world full of fascinating types and of exasperating 
puzzles, for more than one. 

But of the literary “crazes’’ I had no wish to speak at 
length. What I wish to insist upon is this crying need 
for a scholarly study of modern, and especially of Eng- 
lish Literature, in the spirit in which Boeckh studied 
Classical Philology. The history of politics, of ethics, 
of morals, of society, of all civilization, is dependent for 
its progress upon the true and philological comprehen- 
sion of the history of language and of literature. There 
is not ove scholarly task called linguistic science, and 
another, but an unscholarly task, giving rise to endless 
creeds, dogmas, and “‘crazes”’ and called “merely liter- 


A NEGLECTED STUDY ., 377 


ary study,” or “light literary criticism.” There is in 
fact but One Philology, and its purpose is the compre- 
hension of human life as recorded in the monuments of 
language. To this task linguists and literary critics can 
alike contribute. The neglect of such study it is that 
gives especial impetus to those “crazes” wherein a 
vague sense of the greatness of literature joins itself with 
a Philistine dogmatism and an indolent unwillingness to 
study life as it actually is in the living creatures. The 
true philologist studies his authors as living souls, and 
tries to comprehend their place in a national life. He 
does not merely speculate; nor does he merely study 
grammar. He is essentially a naturalist in his concerns 
and methods. And his is the study that, as I think, is 
nowadays too much neglected. 


THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 
[ 1893 ] 


HE collection of poems belonging to what may be 
called the “‘Faust-cycle,” in the literature of the 


present century, contains no extended work whose 
machinery of plot and of incident is, when externally re- 
garded, simpler than that of Browning’s “ Paracelsus.” ! 
The relations of hero and tempter are nowhere freer 
from external complication than when the hero is ex- 
plicitly the deceiver of his own soul. With Paracelsus 
this is actually the case. 

For classing “Paracelsus”? with the Faust-cycle in 
this way there are many grounds. The real Paracelsus 
was a contemporary of the historic prototype of Faust. 
The two figures were, as a fact, closely linked in Goethe’s 
mind, as they must have been in Browning’s. Such a 
classification in no wise detracts from the sort of origi- 
nality which the poem possesses, while it aids us in find- 
ing our way when we consider its problem. The absence 
of an external tempter in no wise excludes the poem from 
the Faust-cycle; for the tempter in most such creations 
is but the hero’s other self, given a magical and plastic 
outer reality, as with Manfred. As regards the positive 
aspects of the analogy, the typical hero of a poem of the 
Faust-cycle is a man of the Renaissance, to whom the 
church is no authority, and to whom the world is magi- 
cally full either of God’s or of Satan’s presence, or of 
both. This hero risks his soul in a quest for some abso- 


1 This paper was read before the Boston Browning Society, 
November 26, 1893. [Printed in Boston Browning Society 
Papers, 1886-97, published by The Macmillan Company, 
New York, 1897. — Ed.] 


THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS — 379 


lute fulfillment of pleasure, power, wisdom or peace. 
Thus staking everything, he gets, like an early voyager 
to the New World, either the doom of the outlaw, 
or the glories of the conquistador; but meanwhile he 
comes near, if he does not meet, an evil end in the 
abyss. 

Thus regarded, the problem of Paracelsus readily de- 
fines itself. We are to study the career of a spiritual 
relative of Faust. Accordingly, we have to consider his 
original quest, and the strong Satanic delusion to which 
he fell prey. In such a light we may hope to express the 
sense of his tragedy. 

1. Browning has told us several times, in the course 
of the poem, where to look for the heart of the mystery. 
Paracelsus made it his early ideal “to know.” Failing 
in this undertaking, conceived as it was in a spirit of 
ideal youthful extravagance, the maturer Paracelsus 
learns from the poet Aprile, in the scene at the Greek 
conjurer’s house, that the goal of life ought to be “‘to 
love” as well as “to know.”’ He endeavors, in conse- 
quence, to reform his life according to the new insight; 
but the attempt comes too late. The “love” that the 
great alchemist tries to cultivate in his heart turns 
rather to hate. He flees from his office as professor at 
Basel, wanders, wastes years fruitlessly, and dies, seeing 
indeed at last his true defect, and explaining it in the 
wonderful closing speech of the poem. 

The whole tragedy thus turns explicitly upon this 
poetic antithesis between “loving” and “knowing.” 
But these words are among the most manifold in mean- 
ing of all the words of human language; from the nature 
of the case they have to be so. In this poem, then, just 
as in daily usage, they will mean whatever the whole 
context of the action shows. Browning portrays, as 


380 THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 


usual, a ““mood”’ (the word is his own, used in the pref- 
ace to the first edition of the poem). He leaves us to 
draw for ourselves the conclusions from the situation 
before us. His choice in this regard but embodies the 
natural privilege of the dramatic poet; the critical prob- 
lem that results for us is one of the most legitimate sort. 
A tragic conflict has occurred through the interplay of 
two of the most universal and Protean of human in- 
terests. How these interests are here colored and defined 
and why they thus conflict, we are, as readers, to deter- 
mine. Such questions of interpretation are necessary in 
case of every serious dramatic issue. 

The very simplicity of seeming of the two familiar 
words “love” and “knowledge”’ has, however, blinded 
many readers to the actual complications of the poem. 
Of the critics some, like Mr. Arthur Symons, find the 
tragic error of Paracelsus in the fact that he is “one 
whose ambition transcends all earthly limits, and ex- 
hausts itself in the thirst of the impossible.” This is of 
course true in a measure of any hero of the type of Faust; 
but one thus defines, as it were, only the genus, not the 
species, of this particular flower from the fields of trag- 
edy. Of the antithesis between “love” and “knowl- 
edge”’ itself, other critics, notably Mr. Berdoe, together 
with far too large a number of readers, appear to make 
little more than would be expressed by the compara- 
tively shallow and abstract platitude that the intellect 
without the affections is a vain guide in life. I doubt not 
that Browning most potently believed this platitude. 
Who of us does not? But with such abstractions one 
gets but a little way, and creates no tragic issues. Asa 
fact, nobody who has a nature on the human level, ever 
lives by either the intellect alone or the affections alone. 
Every rational being both “knows” and “loves,” if by 


THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 381 


these words be meant only the bare abstractions called 
the “pure intellect” and the “affections.” One might 
“love” Hebrew roots, or “know” the art of love- 
making. In either case, in actual life, one would com- 
bine the two functions of loving and knowing, whatever 
one did. But the problem of life is always what to know 
and what to love. Apart from specific objects, the two 
tendencies have no true antithesis. If, then, Browning’s 
contrast means anything, these two words must be used, 
as St. Paul used them, or as common sense always uses 
them, in a pregnant sense, and with an implied refer- 
ence to particular objects known or loved. 

Browning cannot mean to ascribe his hero’s failure to 
the fact that he is a “pure intellectualist,” in the sense 
in which that term is often applied to a man who is ex- 
clusively in love with the study of some one abstract 
science. Such a devotee of pure science Browning actu- 
ally sketched for us later in the “Grammarian’s Fun- 
neral.” The poet, fond as he is of strenuousness, has no 
word of blame for the ideal of such a student, whose 
one-sidedness he finds not tragic, but glorifying. 


Let a man contend, with his utmost might, 
For his life’s best prize, be it what it may. 


That is Browning’s creed, from first to last. I can con- 
ceive, then, no error more hopeless than to suppose that 
the pregnant words which name the ideals of “love” 
and “knowledge,” here tragically and sharply opposed 
to each other, are merely names for the intellectual and 
the affectionate sides of human nature, or that the poem 
is merely a sentimental protest on the part of a young 
poet against the too exclusive devotion of a thoughtful 
hero to his life’s chosen business. Were that the case, it 
would be the solitary instance in all Browning’s works 


382 THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 


where a hero suffers in the poet’s estimation because of 
a too sincere devotion to his chosen ideal. 

As a fact, such an estimate of our poem would here 
contradict the most obvious facts of the text. The man 
Paracelsus, at his coldest, never even tries to appear in 
this poem as a partisan either of a pure intellectualism 
of any sort, or of what we nowadays should call the 
“scientific spirit.” He is no abstract reasoner, but a 
man of intuitions; no admirer of the so-called “cold 
intellect,” but a passionate mystic; no steadily pro- 
gressive student, busied with continuous systematic re- 
searches, but a restless wanderer; no being of clear-cut 
ideas, but a dreamer. The attentive reader cannot miss 
these altogether fundamental considerations. Unless we 
bear in mind these characteristics — the dreaminess, 
the ardor, the mysticism, the unsteadiness, and the es- 
sential unreasonableness of Browning’s Paracelsus — 
the man and his fortunes will remain a sealed book. No 
interpretation that forgets these facts in defining what 
“knowledge” meant for Paracelsus, and how it was 
opposed to the “love”’ of the poet Aprile, will be able 
even to approach a comprehension of the text, or to see 
wherein Paracelsus was deceived. 

I may observe in passing that Browning was fond of 
using the words “‘love,” “knowledge,” and “power”’ in 
a pregnant sense. All three are so used not only in this 
poem but also down to the latest period of the poet’s 
work. The use of familiar words in a pregnant sense, to 
be defined by the context, is the poet’s substitute for 
technical terms. In “Reverie” in “Asolando,” pre- 
cisely the same antithesis as that upon which the trag- 
edy of “Paracelsus’’is based 1s treated, not in its relation 
to a hero’s character, but in a general and meditative 
fashion, with the use of the words “love” and “power” 


THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 383 


as the terms. In fact the problem of “Paracelsus” in- 
volves one of Browning’s most frequent and favorite 
topics of reflection. 

2. In the case of a tragedy of Browning’s creation, 
one can do little with the ideas, unless one first under- 
stands the hero’s personality. How ideal are the aspira- 
tions which Browning attributes to his hero, every 
reader knows. What many readers neglect is that other 
and far less ideal disposition which, with a characteristic 
respect for the complexities of human nature, he attrib- 
utes to what one may call his hero’s lower self. Brown- 
ing has affixed to the poem certain prose notes, meant to 
help us in understanding the author’s attitude. Read by 
themselves, these tend to make us think of Paracelsus 
and his fortunes in anything but an ideal light. The ex- 
cesses, the charlatanry, the other marks of degradation 
— the roughness of speech of this rugged being, when 
once he is angered, his pettiness of motive when once he 
is involved in difficulties — to all these the notes de- 
liberately attract attention. All are fully reflected in the 
poem itself. Browning is not the slavish admirer of his 
own hero, but the true dramatic poet, who takes interest 
in the struggle of a great but burdened and in some re- 
spects degraded soul for the far-off light. Until the very 
end we must not expect to find Paracelsus wholly or even 
very largely an enlightened being. He has to work 
aspiringly in the dark. 

As a creature of flesh and blood, Browning’s Para- 
celsus is, first of all, rather a dreamer than a thinker. 
He is extremely intelligent, but essentially a creature of 
flashes of insight. He is of indomitable courage and of 
restless temper, impatient of restraint, and extremely 
fond, like many other professional men, of the sound of 
his own voice. He is very unconscious meanwhile of a 


384. THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 


certain curiously sentimental fondness for his intimate 
friends which lurks in the background of his rugged 
temperament, and which, especially in the third and 
fourth acts, gets very noteworthy expressions. Unable 
to bring this sentimental motive either to form or to 
consciousness, he is driven to search ceaselessly for ex- 
citing experiences, to the end that a heart which can 
never be satisfied may be kept constantly stimulated. 
So long as life is new, he indeed is able to refrain abso- 
lutely from all meaner indulgences; but he is somewhat 
coarse-fibred, and when higher excitements fail, he takes 
a certain rude delight in more ignoble sport, and mean- 
while despises himself therefor. He is overwhelmingly 
proud, and is by nature condemned to a profound lone- 
liness of experience. 

In order to comprehend what sort of “knowledge”’ is 
in question in the poem, let us observe something sug- 
gested by the relation of our hero to the real Paracelsus. 
Browning says: “The liberties I have taken with my. 
subject are very trifling; and the reader may slip the 
foregoing scenes between the leaves of any memoir of 
Paracelsus he pleases, by way of commentary.” Brown- 
ing was twenty-two years old when he thus wrote. His 
previous reading had been varied and industrious. From 
first to last he was fond of what is called mystical litera- 
ture. Mrs. Sutherland Orr mentions among the books 
read in the poet’s boyhood an old treatise on astrology. 
For the poem itself he read during a few months very 
extensively. There is no evidence, however, that he 
considered it his task, as poet, to trouble himself much 
concerning the technical aspect of the opinions which 
distinguish the actual Paracelsus from other thinkers of 
a similar intellectual type. It is fairly plain, however, 
that Browning had interested himself to collect from 


THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS —§ 385 


such sources as he used a number of illustrations of the 
characteristic speeches and the personal attitudes of his 
hero. The special doctrines of the thinker had less con- 
cern for him. Their spirit, and the deeper nature of the 
man, he sought authentically to portray. 

Especially authentic as characterizing the real Para- 
celsus and especially important, also, for understanding 
the poetic antithesis of “love” and “knowledge,” as 
here developed, is an intellectual trait which Browning 
makes prominent in his hero throughout the poem — 
the curious union of a very great confidence in private 
intuitions, in the inner light, as such, with a very great 
respect for what Paracelsus regards as the right sort of 
external experience of the facts of nature. Here is a man 
to whom “knowledge”’ means his own private, immedi- 
ate and intuitive apprehension of truth through the 
inner light; but to whom this inner light means nothing 
except in relation to the details of outer experience, as he 
himself has verified them; a dark-lantern sort of spirit 
who has to shine alone apart from other lights, and 
whose spiritual insight forever flashes its brilliant beams 
now on this, now on that chance fact of the passing mo- 
ment. To understand the significance of this tendency 
we must give the matter still closer scrutiny. 

3. Browning well read in the real Paracelsus the just- 
mentioned fundamental and noteworthy feature of his 
mental processes. Some men believe in the intuitions, 
in the inner light, of either the reason or the heart; and, 
therefore, they find these intuitions so satisfying that 
they neglect or even abhor the baser revelations of the 
senses. Such men go into their closet and shut the door, 
or, as Schiller has it, they “flee from life’s stress to the 
holy inner temples.’”’ Here they can be alone with God, 
with the truth, with their love, or with all their noble 


386 THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 


sentiments. Such men may be abstract thinkers, serene 
and deep, like Spinoza. If they are more emotionally 
disposed, they become, in various untechnical and de- 
vout fashions, contemplative mystics, quietists, seers of 
divine and incommunicably beautiful dreams. On the 
other hand there are men who stand in sharp contrast to 
the former; these believe, as they say, only “ in the hard 
facts of experience.”” Accordingly, they mistrust all in- 
tuitions, whether rational or emotional. Men of this 
type we call pure empiricists or positivists. 

But these two sharply contrasted types do not any- 
where nearly exhaust the possibilities. Many men there 
are who join, in one way or another, intuition and ex- 
perience. Of these latter there are not a few — even 
among the patient students of natural science, still more, 
among the students of the moral world — who look to 
see the divine law illustrated and incarnated in the facts 
of experience, vivifying either the whole, or some lumi- 
nous part thereof, with its own grace and significance. 
In the classification of these mixed types we must appeal 
to a very ancient and familiar distinction — that be- 
tween the world of our physical and the world of our 
moral experiences. Upon this distinction the problem of 
our whole poem turns. 

Granted, then, that one may expect a divine order, 
such as the higher intuitions have seemed to reveal to 
the mystics, to be more or less obviously embodied and 
exemplified in some type of the concrete facts of our ex- 
perience, there still remains the question, Is it Nature, 
or is 1t Spirit; is it the physical world, or the moral 
world; is it the outer order of natural events, or is it the 
conscious life of mankind in their social, their moral, 
their emotional relations; is it the world as the student 
of natural wonders, or the world as the lover of human 


EiEY PROBERM: OR RARAGCE RESUS tii 357 


life, the artist, the portrayer of passion, comprehends it; 
in fine, is it the world of the “powers” of nature, or the 
world of the heart of man, that is the most likely and 
adequate to furnish facts capable of illustrating and em- 
bodying the divine purpose? This question is one of the 
oldest in the history of the higher problems of human 
thought. The vision of Elijah at Horeb is an ancient 
comment on this topic. Is God in the wonders of nature 
—in the storm, the thunder, the earthquake? No, 
answers the story, He is not in these. He is in the “‘still 
small voice.” The antithesis is thus an extremely fa- 
miliar one; it was a favorite topic of consideration with 
Browning. His own personal view agrees with that of 
the narrator of the vision of Elijah. 

Many men (for instance, the modern followers of the 
ethical idealism that resulted from Kant’s teachings) 
have learned to be very skeptical about finding any rev- 
elation of the divine will, or of any absolute truth, in the 
world of the facts of physical nature. These facts they 
find, like Browning in “ Reverie,” too complex, too deep, 
too full of apparent evil, too dark, to show us the divine 
will. God may be behind them, but they merely hide 
Him. Our insight into external nature is essentially 
limited. We vainly strive, in the present life, to peer 
into such mysteries. The world of physical experiences 
is, as Kant declared, but the world of our limitations. 
It is the moral world, then, and not the physical world, 
that can show the divine. In “Reverie” Browning 
states the issue and its possible solution substantially 
thus: If one looks outwards, one sees a world which 
Browning calls the world of “power,” that is, the phys- 
ical universe. It is a world of rigid law, and in the 
observer it begets a state called knowledge, that is, 
in the language of this poem, an outward-looking and 


388 THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 


helplessly submissive acceptance of what one finds 
there: 
“Tn a beginning God 
Made heaven and earth.” Forth flashed 
Knowledge: from star to clod 
Men knew things: doubt abashed 
Closed its long period. 


“Knowledge obtained, Power praise,” continues the 
poet; but he observes that what knowledge has thus re- 
vealed is everything and anything but a manifestly 
divine order. This world of natural knowledge shows 
itself full of strife, evil, death, decay. Can one hope, 
then, for a solution here? No, but there is another world, 
the moral world, the world of love, and of conscious and 
ideal activity. This is the world that to the hopeful lover 
of the good shows, amidst all its incompleteness, genu- 
ine traces of the divine will. The poet contrasts this, the 
moral world, as being, despite its mixture of tendencies, 
rather the world of “Love,” with the other world — 
that oft Powerl), 

The world of “knowledge,” whose facts come from 
without and simply mould the passive mind to accept 
and submit in the presence of an undivine destiny, is 
still further contrasted with the facts revealed in the 
“leap of man’s quickened heart,” in the “stings of his 
soul which dart through the barrier of flesh,” and in all 
that striving upwards, that moral idealism, which is for 
Browning, somewhat as for Kant, the one basis for the 
assurance that “‘God’s in his heaven; all’s right with the 
world.” 

One is to get the final revelation in terms of decidedly 
moral categories. It is “rising and not resting,” it is 
“seeking the soul’s world” and “‘spurning the worm’s,”’ 
it is not passively “knowing,” but morally acting, that 


THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS — 389 


is to confirm one’s faith. What already tends in the 
present life towards such confirmation is not ‘“‘knowing”’ 
the outer world, but living “my own life.” 

Where, among these rather manifold types of man- 
kind, did Paracelsus stand? Was he a mystical quietist, 
or was he in any fashion a mere positivist? Did Brown- 
ing conceive him as in substantial agreement with his 
own views? We need not attribute to Browning, at 
twenty-two years of age, any very elaborate or articu- 
late philosophy when we conceive him taking sides con- 
cerning this ancient and familiar issue with regard to 
the method and the region of the divine revelation. In 
“Paracelsus,” as in “Asolando,” the general view and 
the terminology of the poet are identical. Paracelsus is 
no mystical quietist or positivist. He unites experience 
and intuition. But he does not look in the moral world 
for the divine revelation. He looks elsewhere. He be- 
longs, then, to another class than Browning or the ethi- 
cal idealists who follow Kant. What is this class? 

There is a type of men whom one might call the Oc- 
cult Idealists, or in other words the Physical Mystics. 
Men of this type seem to themselves to possess over- 
whelmingly clear intuitions of the divinest depth; but 
these always relate to the spiritual interpretation of par- 
ticular physical facts. The word of the Lord comes to 
such men, but in the form of a theoretical revelation as 
to the meaning of this and this in the world of outer ex- 
perience. They, therefore, are never content in the 
“holy inner temples.” They dislike purely speculative 
systems, as well as all inner dreaming. They are very 
impatient, too, of the limitations of human nature. 
They deny such limitations. One can know whatever 
one is deep enough to interpret in the facts of nature. 
Equally, however, such men despise those mere non- 


390 =THE PROBLEM'OF PARAGELSUS 


mystical empiricists, who have and who respect no holy 
intuitions. Our empirical mystics find no facts “‘hard,”’ 
as do the positivists, but all facts deep. They do not 
much believe in a God whom either speculation or medi- 
tation finds in the cloistered solitudes of the mind. They 
want to find him in this or in that physical fact, in this 
sign or wonder, in that natural symbol, in yonder re- 
ported strange cure of a sick man, in weird tales of 
second sight, in the still unread lore of the far East, in 
“psychical research,” in the “subliminal self,” in the 
stars, in the revelations of trance mediums, in the 
Ouija board or in Planchette — perhaps in a pack of 
cards, or in the toss of a coin. Nowadays we are more 
or less familiar with this type of empiricists, who still 
rather uncritically trust their intuitions; of collectors of 
facts, who mean thereby to prove the reality of the uni- 
versal order and of the spiritual world; they seem never 
quite sure of the divine omnipresence until they have 
looked behind this door, or have peered into the cup- 
board, to see whether God after all is really there. 

4. The historical Paracelsus was, on the whole, a man 
of this type — an empirical mystic who devoted him- 
self to physical studies. For this class we have the 
rather awkward but almost unavoidable general name, 
Occultist. By Occultist we do not mean merely one who 
believes that there are divinely mysterious, 7. e., truly 
occult, things in our world. The Kantian or Ethical 
Idealist believes in such mysteries, and is in no wise an 
occultist. But the latter is rather one who believes in a 
particular method of proving and interpreting the pres- 
ence of the divinely occult. This method is a sort of 
restless collection of quaint and varied facts of experi- 
ence. Quaint these facts must be; for what lies near at 
hand is never so clearly divine, to such eyes, as the dis- 


THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 391 


tant, the uncommon, the foreign. In our own day God 
is to be found in the far East; here at home we can ob- 
tain him only at second hand. The Arabs and the Hin- 
doos are the true adepts. So Browning’s Paracelsus 
sets out on long and indefinite travels. The occultist’s 
facts must be varied. In the Father’s house are many 
mansions, and their furniture is extremely manifold. 
Astral bodies and palmistry, trances and mental healing, 
communications from the dead and “phantasms of the 
living’’ — such things are for some people today the sole 
quite unmistakable evidences of the supremacy of the 
spiritual world. Some of these things were known to the 
real Paracelsus; others, as varied, he also knew and 
prized. 

The real Paracelsus was a medical man, whose philos- 
ophy and occultism were chiefly valuable in his own eyes 
as laying a foundation for his skill as a. healer. This 
aspect retreats into the background in Browning’s poem, 
for obvious reasons, such as the difficulty of employing 
forgotten medical lore in verse. The Paracelsus of the 
poem is at once a dreamer of universal dreams and an 
ardent empiricist. 

What fairer seal 
Shall I require to my authentic mission 


Than this fierce energy? — this instinct striving 
Because its nature is to strive? 


So he tells us in the first act, where the young aspirant 
for a divine mission bids farewell to his two friends ere 
he sets out on a long wandering in search of his knowl- 
edge. But what this “striving” proves is, he says, the 
presence of 

God helping, God directing everywhere, 

So that the earth shall yield her secrets up, 


And every object there be charged to strike, 
Teach, gratify, her master God appoints. 


392 THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 


In other words Paracelsus is going, in the service of God 
and man, to,scour the earth in the search of numerous 
lost facts of some vast significance for human welfare. 

To this conception of the young dreamer’s life mission 
his friend Festus replies, with a certain wonder, that one 
so sure of God as Paracelsus at the outset of his great 
quest appears to be, might as well seek for all this heal- 
ing truth near by, in 


Some one of Learning’s many palaces. 


Why should Paracelsus thus look for the truth only “in 
strange and untried paths’’? 
What books are in the desert? Writes the sea 


The secret of her yearning in vast caves 
Where yours will fall the first of human feet? 


Festus doubts the very sincerity of his friend’s quest 
for knowledge, since it seems to involve scorn for all the 
accessible lore of the past ages of learning, and a mere 
resort to the accidental experiences of the aimless wan- 
derer. 

The reply of Paracelsus goes very deep into his own 
character, and reveals to us a certain scorn of the medi- 
ocrity of ordinary men, a scorn often characteristic of 
dreamers, of every type; a sense of the unique intensity 
of his own inner life — a sense upon which is founded 
his love for lonely ways; his assurance of his immediate 
intuitions of the divine; and finally, a curious and very 
characteristic belief that this immediate intercourse with 
God is not of itself enough, and that it points out to 
him a very hard, a very long, but a very wonderful 
path along which he must henceforth go — a path that 
is to lead to the discovery of an endless multitude of 
special truths, and such a multitude as it almost crazes 
him to contemplate; this path is the path of the collector 


THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS —§ 393 


of special facts of experience. The passage of the poem 
contains some of the most frequently quoted and least 
understood lines of the whole work. Paracelsus tells first 
about the moment of his discovery of his mission, when 
he learned the wide contrast between his own powers 
and calling and those of ordinary men. He then narrates 
his inner experience of a conversation with the divine 
voice that spoke in his soul at that great moment, and 
he closes: — 
I go to prove my soul! 

I see my way as birds their trackless way. 

I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first, 

I ask not: but unless God send his hail 


Or blinding fire-balls, sleet, or stifling snow, 
In some time — his good time — I shall arrive. 


This spirited announcement of the youthful under- 
taking of Paracelsus contains thoughts that many 
readers too lightly pass over. One is too easily deceived 
by this young man’s ardent words. One forgets that 
Browning is here but the dramatic poet, who does not 
mean us to take these tenders for true pay. As a fact 
Paracelsus is by no means as inspired as he fancies. Let 
us analyze the situation a little. Paracelsus has already 
gained, as he thinks, a very deep insight into the world. 
God is, and Paracelsus communes with him, directly, 
and in his own heart. Nevertheless, he must go some- 
where, for years far away, to find — what? A new reli- 
gion? No, Paracelsus is no religious reformer. A new 
revelation of God’s “intercourse” with men? This is 
what he himself says. In fact, however, this “inter- 
course,” from his point of view, concerns the cause and 
cure of human diseases. This is indeed a grave matter, 
and one for a long quest. But where would the medical 
student of that time naturally look for the path to be 


394 THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 


followed in this quest? The reply of course would be, 
“some one of Learning’s many palaces.’’ One would 
study the traditional medical art, and would then try 
to improve upon it as one could. But Paracelsus rejects 
this way altogether. Why? Because the immediate in- 
tuition, this direct revelation from God, shows him that 
not upon such traditional ways lies the goal. But if one 
communes thus directly with God, why not learn the 
secrets of the medical art at first hand, by immediate 
revelation, at home in solitary meditation, without wan- 
dering? This is the well-known way of some modern 
“mental healers.’ God speaks in the heart. Why try 
the desert and the sea caves? Why wander through 
nature, looking for new remedies? The reply is that 
Paracelsus is a born empiricist, and cannot rest in his 
intuitions. They are vast, these intuitions, and im- 
mediate, but they are not enough. There is the whole 
big outer world, this storehouse of specimens of divine 
truth. One must see, feel, touch, try. In that way only 
can one learn God’s will, and the art of healing. 

Still one asks, with Festus, Did not the ancients, 
whom Paracelsus rejects, collect experiences in their own 
way? Could not one study facts wherever there are 
“learning’s palaces” and sick men? Why wander off 
into the vague? If the world of experience concerns you, 
then, precisely as if you were a mere positivist, you need 
the codperation of your fellows in your research. Why 
not then, like the modern ethical idealist of the Kantian 
type, accept the inner light as giving you ideals, but ob- 
tain also the outer world facts by the aid of public and 
common labors, researches, traditions? Why despise 
one’s fellows in order to learn God’s will? 

Nay, our occultist must reply, just there is the rub. 
One wants the facts, but only as interpreted by the inner 


THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 395 


light; and the inner light, for an occultist, is not some- 
thing rationally universal and human, like the insights 
upon which a Kantian idealist depends, but is the pos- 
session only of the favored few. One must, therefore, 
find out God’s will all alone by one’s self. One may 
accept no help from another’s eyes, no codperation from 
one’s meaner fellows. At best the traditions of some far 
off occult lore, the secrets of unknown Oriental adepts, 
may be trusted as guides. This inner light of the occult- 
ist is something so personal, immediate, and precious, 
that one cannot believe it common to all mankind in 
case they only reason. Nor can one regard one’s in- 
tuitions as concerning only a spiritual order, such as the 
natural world, being a merely phenomenal expression of 
man’s limitations, fails to embody. One is too ardent 
an empiricist, and too impatient a mystic, to accept any 
human limitations at all. Thus, then, the occultist’s 
view gets its definition. We have to take into account 
all the elements, the vast, immediate, private intuition, 
and the restless love of facts, in order to get this defi- 
nition. The hard path before Paracelsus is the path of 
an endless collection of precisely the most novel and 
scattered facts of nature. Only such novel and scattered 
facts can be worthy of the attention of a person whose 
intuitions are private, immediate, and yet universal. 
One’s intuition is that these facts somehow all belong to- 
gether, as all the world is one. Therefore, the farther off, 
the more incoherent, the dimmer, the more “‘secret”’ the 
special facts, the better will they serve, when you find 
them, as examples of God’s will; for God made them all 
somehow into his one world, to magnify his own power, 
to display his glory, to heal his suffering children. But 
how long the “‘trackless way,” where indeed only God 
is to guide, because the entire search has no principle 


396 THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 


save the single intuition that God himself is great, and 
that, therefore, even the remotest things in time and in 
space are in his eyes one, since He made them, and must 
somehow secretly have linked them! 

Here lies a sick man. What has caused his sickness? 
Perhaps something astral. The stars are linked to us by 
a divinely ordained sympathy. Astronomy is one of the 
“pillars of medicine.’”” We must know the stars well, 
else we cannot judge about their effect upon diseases. 
What is best fitted to cure this patient? God of course 
has provided a remedy, and has left it lying somewhere 
in the world — that vast world which is all one place 
tor God, but which, alas, is so wearily big and manifold 
for us. The only way is to look with the eye of a trained 
intuition for some hidden sign, such as quite escapes the 
vulgar eye, whereby the remedy of this particular dis- 
order may be recognized when you meet with it in 
nature. The divine kindliness has provided each of na- 
ture’s remedies with a sort of sign or label. The flowers, 
the leaves, the fruits of remedial plants indicate by their 
colors, forms, textures, the particular diseases that they 
are fitted to cure. This was the famous doctrine of “sig- 
natures,’ of which the real Paracelsus made so much. 
But again, only the experienced man, taught at once by 
the God within and by his own eyes that restlessly look 
hither and thither without, can learn to recognize these 
signs, labels, remedies. The divine apothecary (the 
phrase is borrowed from the real Paracelsus himself) has 
marked, as it were, all these his natural medicine flasks 
— flowers, plants, minerals — with a certain sort of 
occult language, and has then left them scattered about 
the whole world. Only a wanderer can find them. Only 
a philosopher, taught of God direct, can read the labels, 
these cryptograms of nature. Hence this possessor of 


THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 397 


intuitions must ceaselessly wander; and his wanderer 
must ceaselessly depend only upon the inner light to 
guide him. Everything in the universe is connected with 
everything else. Hence “the mighty range of secret 
truths that long for birth.” Mystic links bind man, the 
microcosmus, to the whole of nature, the macrocosmus. 
The physician must know these links in order to heal. 
Above all must he remember that everything in nature 
reveals, not so much itself, as something else. The world 
is all symbolic. God loves, in nature, to express himself 
darkly by signs, portents, shadows of truth. All these 
concern the philosophical physician, and they are, alas, 
so secret, so hard to read. God, who in the heart, speaks 
so plainly — well, in nature He hides himself in a mystic 
dumb show, and helplessly gesticulates like an untaught 
and enthusiastic deaf-mute. Such is the essential creed 
of any occultist. Here is a kind of doctrine that pre- 
tends, above all, to honor God; yet, as a fact, one who 
pursues this “trackless way” behaves as if the God of 
nature were a sort of Laura Bridgman, whom the occult- 
ist first teaches to talk intelligibly. 

5. I have thus thought it right to insist upon certain 
characteristics of the real Paracelsus, whom Browning 
unquestionably had in mind as he wrote the passage the 
close of which has been quoted. I have dwelt long upon 
these characteristics because here lies the key to the 
whole poem. Browning has a certain deep personal 
fondness for the occultists. Their type fascinates him. 
He reads and portrays them often. Yet, on the other 
hand, he is never able, either in his youth, when he 
wrote this poem, or in later life, to share their doctrine. 
In “Paracelsus” he means to set forth their great de- 
fect. He often later returns to the problem. The same 
theme is treated in “The Strange Experience of Kar- 


398 THE PROBL EMVORVPARACESUS 


shish.”’ Karshish and Paracelsus are, to borrow the 
speech of the occultists, different incarnations of the 
same spirit. Browning admires the “ picker-up of learn- 
ing’s crumbs,” the mystic who pursues the occult all 
through the natural world. The error of the occultist 
lies in supposing that God is in this way revealed, or to 
be found. Browning’s own opinion, as poet, has a close 
relation to ethical idealism. 

For Browning, God is revealed within, not without, 
our own human nature. Therefore, and here is the main 
point of Browning’s criticism of occultism, it is in our 
spiritual communion with one another, it is in our world 
of human loves, and even of human hates, that one gets 
in touch with God. When man really meets man, in 
love, in conflict, in passion, then the knowledge of God 
gets alive in both men. The true antithesis is not be- 
tween the pure intellect and the affections; for your 
occultist is no partisan of the pure intellect. He, too, is 
in love, in mystical love, but with outer nature. Nor is 
the antithesis that between the scientific spirit and the 
spirit of active benevolence. Paracelsus, as one devoted 
to the art of healing, is from the first abstractly but 
transcendently benevolent. His is simply not the scien- 
tific spirit. The antithesis between “knowledge,” as the 
occultist conceives it, and “love,” as the poet views it, 
is the contrast between looking in the world of outer na- 
ture for a symbolic revelation of God, and looking in the 
moral world, the world of ideals, of volition, of freedom, 
of hope and of human passion, for the direct incarnation 
of the loving and the living God. The researches of the 
occultist are fascinating, capricious—and resultless. It 
is the student of men who talks with God face to face, 
as a familiar friend. The occultist, peering about in the 
dark, sees, like Moses in the cleft of the rock, only God’s 


THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS — 399 


back. The truly occult world is that where the lovers 
and the warriors meet and part. There alone God is re- 
vealed. Search as you will in the far East, in the deserts, 
in the sea caves, you will never find any natural object 
more verily occult than are his love’s eyes to the lover. 
Browning’s mysticism thus has always an essentially 
human object before it. He, therefore, sometimes de- 
picts, with especial fondness, the awakened occultist, 
who has just learned where lies the true secret of our re- 
lations with God. So it happened with Karshish — 


Why write of trivial matters, things of price 
Calling at every moment for remark? 

I noticed on the margin of a pool 
Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort, 
Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange! 


Here speaks the true occultist. But now there awak- 
ens in him, unrestrainable, the new insight, which the 
meeting with the risen Lazarus has suggested: — 


The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think? 

So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too — 

So, through the thunder comes a human voice 
Saying, ““O heart I made, a heart beats here! 
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! 

Thou hast no power, nor mayst conceive of mine, 
But love I gave thee, with myself to love, 

And thou must love me who have died for thee!” 
The madman saith He said so: it is strange. 


It is the Christian mystery of the Incarnation that is 
here in question. But as we know, Browning was no 
literally orthodox believer, and the essential truth of 
Christianity was, for him, identical with his own poeti- 
cal faith that the divine plan is incarnate in humanity, 
in human loves and in all deep social relationships, 
rather than in outer nature. A similar train of thought 


400 THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 


guides the half-conscious inspiration of the young David 
in the poem “Saul,” as the singer of Israel feels after 
the prophecy of the Incarnation, and reaches it at last 
through a sort of poetic induction by the “Method of 
Residues.” First, with all the fascination of the occult- 
ist, though with all the frank innocence of the un- 
tutored shepherd, David ransacks the whole natural 
world for God. As the youth is an optimist, he meets 
here indeed with no obstacles to his fancy; he is troubled 
by none of the natural mysteries that would baffle the 
more technical occultist; but still the story, even when 
most rapturously sung, when fullest of the comprehen- 
sion of nature’s symbolism, lacks the really divine note. 
God 1s somehow not quite revealed in all this. And 
hereupon David struggles, toils, pauses, hesitates — 
and then, with one magnificent bound of the spirit, 
springs wholly beyond the world of the occultist to grasp 
at once the most transcendent of mysteries and the most 
human of commonplaces: — 


’T is the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I 
seek 

In the Godhead! I seek it and find it. O Saul, it shall be 

A Face like my face that receives thee: a Man like to me 

Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this 
hand 

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ 
stand! 


It is by the light of this kind of poetic intuition of the 
true place of the divine in our world that Browning, in 
“Paracelsus,” lets experience criticize the occultist. 

6. As the hero, therefore, of such a critical poem 
Browning chooses a mystic of the Renaissance. This 
mystic’s creed is, on the whole, that of the real Paracel- 
sus — a neoplatonic philosophy of nature. The first 


THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS $401 


of its main features, as expounded in the dying speech 
of Paracelsus, is Monism. God is not merely above all, 
He is through all nature; He is included in everything. 
Then there is the symbolism so characteristic of the 
whole doctrine. Every natural process has a mystic 
meaning. Everything ts alive, and has relations to all 
other things. Further, man, as microcosm, is a copy in 
miniature of the whole universe. Hence, in order to un- 
derstand man, as a physician must do in healing diseases 
one must look about in all directions, without. Thus 
arises the need of an endless collection of special experi- 
ences, and hence, also the constant need of deep intui- 
tions in order to comprehend the maze of facts. Every 
speck expands into a star. Such a search means in the 
end madness and despair. As a fact, for Paracelsus, the 
stellar world is needed to explain all sorts of phenomena 
in the lower regions. This view, and the doctrine of | 
“signatures,” inspired all his work — and poisoned the 
very life-blood of it. 

Browning, too, had his own sort of mysticism. He 
also was a monist. But the poet makes his hero confess 
that he “gazed on power”’ till he “grew blind.” Not 
that way lies the truth. He who gazes not on power, 
but on the “weakness in strength” of the human spirit, 
he alone finds the way to God. 

In the course of the poem, Browning brings this oc- 
cultist face to face with a spiritual opponent, who tries 
to show him the truth, and in part succeeds. This oppo- 
nent is a typical, a universally sensitive, a thoroughly 
humane artist. The “lover” and the “knower”’ of the 
poet are thus explicitly the artist and the occultist. The 
doctrine that Aprile teaches is, first, that God is love, 
and, secondly, that the meaning of this doctrine is 
simply that God is the “perfect poet, who in creating 


402 ‘THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 


acts his own creations.”’ God, then, is related to his 
world as the true lover is to the desires of his own faith- 
ful heart, or as the artist is to his own inspired works. 
This is, indeed, mysticism, and it is neither for the 
young Browning nor for his characters any highly ar- 
ticulate theory of the world — any technical philosophy. 
But it is certainly an intelligible and intuitively asserted 
doctrine as to how to find the divine in experience. 
What it asserts is this: If you want to know God, live 
rather than peer about you; be observant of the moral 
rather than of the physical world; create as the artist 
creates rather than collect facts as the occultist collects 
them; watch men rather than things; consider the se- 
crets of the heart rather than the hopelessly mysterious 
symbolism of nature; be fond of the most commonplace, 
so long as it is the commonplace in human life, rather 
than of the most startling miracles of the physical 
world; discover new lands in man’s heart, and let the 
deserts and the sea caves alone; call nothing work that 
is not done in company with your fellowmen, and noth- 
ing true insight that does not mean work thus shoulder 
to shoulder with your comrades. All this, in substance, 
Aprile teaches; and this, and nothing else, is what he and 
Browning here mean by “Love.” The parallelism with 
the later poems, “ Karshish”’ and “‘Saul,”’ is emphasized 
in a later edition of the “‘Paracelsus”’ by the lines added 
at the end of Aprile’s dying speech: — 

Man’s weakness is his glory — for the strength 

Which raises him to heaven and near God’s self 

Came spite of it: God’s strength his glory is, 


For thence came with our weakness sympathy, 
Which brought God down to earth, a man like us! 


It is not the power of God as revealed in nature, but the 
love that in Him, as a being who is alive like us, links 


THE PROBLEM OF PARACEESUS))) 403 


his perfect life to our striving, and lives in active and 
passionate sympathy; it is this alone which makes God 
comprehensible to us. For only in this attribute is He 
revealed to us. His other attributes are, in our present 
state of existence, hopelessly dark to us. 

If this is true, then indeed the quest and the method 
of Paracelsus have been, in Browning’s eyes, vain 
enough. Let us be frank about it. The heroic speech of 
Paracelsus consists of tenders and not of true pay. It is 
vainglorious boasting; and must be regarded as such. 
Or, to speak less bluntly, it 1s a pathetic fallacy. Para- 
celsus does ot see his way as birds their trackless way. 
On the contrary, his instinct is false, and his way, be- 
fore one reaches the very moment of his final dying en- 
lightenment and confession, is a blind flight no-whither 
through the blue. God has no need to waste any hail or 
fire-balls on the case. Paracelsus is left to himself, and 
he does not arrive, except, indeed, at that very last 
moment, at the insight that another man ought to be 
formed to take his place. All this, from Browning’s 
hopeful point of view, means no absolute failure. Our 
alchemist, amid all his delusions, remains a worthy 
tragic hero, devoted, courageous, indomitable, endur- 
ing, a soldier at heart. Even the wrath of man praises 
God, much more his misguided devotion. It is this de- 
votion that to the end we honor even amid all our hero’s 
excesses. But Paracelsus, as he is, is a sincere deceiver 
of his own soul, and, as far as in him lies, he is a blind 
guide of his fellows. Here, in the contrast between the 
truth that lies, after all, so near to his ardent spirit, and 
the error that is, despite this fact, so hopeless, is the 
tragedy. Were the truth not so near, the error, indeed, 
would not be so hopeless. Were the man not so ad- 
mirably strenuous, he might be converted before his 


404 THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 


deathbed. He is no weakling, but a worthy companion 
of Faust. Yet just herein lies his earthly ruin. 

7. Let us now apply the central idea of the poem to 
its action in a brief review. Paracelsus the occultist 
aspires, bids farewell to his friends, and then sets out on 
his great quest. Years later we find him, older, but 
hardly wiser, at the house of the Greek conjurer in 
Constantinople, where he seeks magic enlightenment as 
to his future. The reply to his request comes in the 
shape of the sudden meeting with that mysterious figure, 
the dying poet Aprile, who has come to this place upon 
a similar errand after a life of failure. The two men 
meet, and, in the wondrous scene which follows, Para- 
celsus learns and, as far as his poor occult wit com- 
prehends it, accepts the ideal of the poet, who “would 
love infinitely and be loved.” The characters here 
brought into tragic conflict, the “lover” and the 
“knower,” are the Artist and the Occultist. Both are 
enthusiasts, both have sought God, both have longed 
to find out how to benefit mankind. There is no clash 
of reason with sentiment. On the contrary, neither of 
these men is in the least capable of ever becoming a 
reasoner; both are dreamers; both have failed in what 
they set out todo. There is no contrast of “love,” as 
Christian charity or practical humanitarianism, with 
“knowledge” as something more purely contemplative. 
Aprile is no reformer. He longed to do good, but as an 
artist; he longed to create, but as a maker of the beauti- 
ful. His ideal attitude is, in its way, quite as contem- 
plative as is that of Paracelsus. This “knower” is a 
physician. This artist, with all his creative ideals, longs 
to “love” by apprehending the works of God as shown 
forth in the passions of man. 

The real contrast lies in the places where the two men 


THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS = 405 


have sought for God, and in the degrees of strenuousness 
with which they have pursued the quest. The artist has 
sought God in the world of human passion, Paracelsus 
in the magical and secret places of outer nature. The 
artist has no cause to repent his choice of God’s abode; 
God is, to his eyes, even too dazzlingly and obviously 
there in human hearts, lives, forms, and deeds. The 
occultist has been baffled despite his labors. In strenu- 
ousness, Paracelsus has had by far the advantage. In 
this he is indeed the king. But had Paracelsus combined 
Aprile’s ideals and powers with his own strenuousness, 
what a kingdom might by this time have become his! 
Such is the obvious significance of this wonderful scene. 

Now, let us attempt an explanation of the vicissitudes 
and of the degradation of our hero’s later career. The 
dying legacy of Aprile to Paracelsus is the counsel not 
to wait for perfection, but to do what the time permits 
while life lasts. Accepting this counsel, but very dimly 
apprehending the meaning of the artist’s ideal of “love,”’ 
and falsely supposing himself to have “attained,” where 
he had only vaguely and distantly conceived, the occult- 
ist now resolves to show his love for mankind in more 
immediate practical relations with them. The artist has 
counseled just such closer relations, and this is all that 
Paracelsus has been able as yet to comprehend. The 
result is the abortive life in the professorship in Basel. 
To Paracelsus the actual spirit of the dead Aprile seems 
after all to beunable or unwilling to do anything for him. 
One preaches occultism to his students, supposing him- 
self to be acting in the sense of the artist who had coun- 
seled him to get nearer to men’s hearts. But the words 
of these lectures sound hollow even to one’s own ears, 
and so one is driven to “bombast.” The few “crumbs”’ 
of learning, picked up through all those years of wan- 


406 THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS 


dering, appear now as nothing to the mysteries still un- 
learned. One had not known, in fact, how small was 
one’s store of collections until after he had burned the 
books of Galen and the rest, and then had actually be- 
gun to teach. One must now resort to boasting, char- 
latanry, melancholy, self-reproach, and foreboding. The 
man is too ardent of purpose to admit in public his own 
defect, but too really noble of soul to tolerate in the 
least his own charlatanry. God is now indeed far off. 
The artist said that one found him best and most among 
living men. But in this lecture-room the poor occultist, 
peer as he will, can discover with certainty only a mass 
of fools. The most occult, the darkest, the most fear- 
some of all the arts turns out to be the art of pedagogy, 
— the one truly creative art whereby Paracelsus could 
have hoped to enter Aprile’s world. 

The inevitable downfall comes, and Paracelsus is 
driven from Basel. His indomitable temper wins our 
admiration even after we have learned the utter useless- 
ness of all his magic arts. He now gives us a new version 
of April’s doctrine as he conceives it. In the song, “Over 
the sea our galleys went,” he depicts the hopelessness of 
trying to come into close relations with men by the de- 
vices that are within his own reach. Unlike the real 
Paracelsus, he can be a poet, but not, like Aprile, an 
artist comprehending and depicting other men. In his 
chaos of excitement, in his lamentation over his failure, 
— yes, in his cups, one must add — he can sing in verse 
his own tragedy, not the meaning of any life but his own. 
At length he seems to see the truth. What Aprile really 
meant must have been that a man must live — a short 
life and a full one, in loneliness, in chaos, but at any rate 
in a whirlwind of passion. Thus alone can one learn to 


THE PROBLEM OF PARACELSUS —§ 407 


know. The occultist shall be joined now with the man 
of passion. Thus, once again, Paracelsus aspires. 

An occultist must finish his days magically. From 
weary dreams and furious delirium the dying seer mirac- 
ulously arises, full of seeming vigor and of cool insight, 
to tell to his friend what knowledge he has attained at 
this supreme moment. Now at last we do indeed learn 
the truth. Paracelsus has not “arrived” at what he 
sought, an earthly mission; but he now sees why he has 
failed. The old mystical monism was right; but as the 
seer depicts it before us, a new spirit has come into it. 
The story of the world is right as of old; but the artist 
alone had put the true interpretation upon it. Could 
the Paracelsus of former days but have understood in 
his time what love meant, could he but have known how 
all the waves and eddies of human passion, even when 
they seem farthest from the divine, reveal God as no ob- 
ject in outer nature, however wonderful, can ever do — 
the occultist would not have aspired tn vain! He would 
have been transformed, as the man of the future shall 
be, into the artist. This is the final message of Paracel- 
sus, and the meaning of the whole tale. 


POPE LEO’S PHILOSOPHICAL MOVE- 
MENT AND ITS RELATIONS TO 
MODERN ‘THOUGHT 


L 1903 J 


NE of the most notable features of the work of 
( ) late Pope Leo was what is usually called his 

revival of scholastic philosophy. The movement 
of thought which has received this name is a very com- 
plex one. Its consequences have been varied and have 
not been altogether such as the Pope himself would 
appear to have foreseen. In any case, they have involved 
phenomena that have a good deal of interest to the pub- 
lic outside of the Catholic Church. Many students of 
philosophy, of theology, and even of the natural sciences 
— students, I mean, who have no direct concern with 
any of the internal affairs of Leo’s own religious body — 
are still forced, although outsiders, to recognize how im- 
portant, for the general intellectual progress of our time, 
the future outcome of the whole Neo-Scholastic move- 
ment in the Catholic Church may prove. For if the 
process which Leo initiated continues to go on unhin- 
dered, the positive results for the increase of awholesome 
codperation between Catholic and non-Catholic investi- 
gators and teachers will probably be both great and 
helpful. On the other hand, if this same process is seri- 
ously and effectively checked by the forces of conserva- 
tive officialism within the Roman communion, the 
consequence will be a return to certain forms of con- 
troversy and of mutual misunderstanding amongst some 
of the principal schools of modern opinion, a return which 
no lover of reason ought to welcome. The death of the 
Pope, and the choice of his successor, bring into promi- 


PHILOSOPHY AND MODERN THOUGHT 409 


nence the distinctly practical issues whose nature is thus 
suggested. These issues concern, indeed, in the first 
place, the inner life of the Roman Church. But they 
also indirectly concern, in a genuine sense, the common 
interests of modern intellectual progress and of public 
education. 

While I have, of course, neither right nor desire to 
form any opinion as to the motives and the merits of 
such partisan divisions and controversies as are present, 
at this critical moment, within the Catholic Church, I 
nevertheless feel, as a non-Catholic observer, as a stu- 
dent of philosophy, and also as one who occasionally has 
reason to consult current Catholic philosophic litera- 
ture, a good deal of interest in the fortunes of the move- 
ment of thought which Leo initiated. I venture to give 
expression to this interest in the present form, because 
I suppose that others who, like myself, have no direct 
concern with the internal life of Catholicism, may still 
wish to get clearer ideas as to the intellectual relations 
of modern Catholic thought to modern civilization. 


I 


THe PLace or PHILOSOPHY IN CATHOLIC 
INTELLECTUAL LIFE 


If the so-called Neo-Scholastic movement which the 
late Pope initiated were indeed only a revival of scho- 
lastic metaphysics, and nothing more, it might seem to 
mean little for mankind at large. But, as a fact, from 
the very nature of Catholic scholarship, and because of 
the best established traditions of its educational system, 
the philosophy of the Catholic schools determines most 
of what is technically characteristic of the intellectual 
life of all representative Catholic thinkers. For Catholic 


410 POPE\ EEO S\ PHITOSOPREY 


theology, in expounding and defending the doctrines of 
its Church, has an intimate and conscious connection 
with philosophical opinions such as far surpasses the 
kind of union of dogma and speculation that other 
Christian bodies have in recent times been able to re- 
tain. In non-Catholic churches, in later periods, the reli- 
gious life has been emphasized at the expense of dogma, 
and even doctrinal controversies, when they are recog- 
nized as vital, tend on the whole to free themselves as 
much as possible from philosophical technicalities. The 
philosophical education of the modern protestant clergy- 
man is consequently, in general, a decidedly uneven and 
accidental sort of training, whose amount is subject to 
very arbitrary variations, from man to man, and from 
school to school. But Catholic tradition has made the 
relation of theology and philosophy much closer and 
more uniform; and the most highly equipped and schol- 
arly of the Catholic clergy have been submitted, in the 
course of their education, to an amount of technical 
philosophical discipline which one may or may not re- 
gard as useful, but which certainly gives to their philos- 
ophy a central importance in their minds. Any notable 
movement in Catholic philosophical training conse- 
quently affects the attitude of Catholic scholars towards 
all sorts of intellectual problems that fall within the 
range of their interest. Hence, the Neo-Scholasticism 
which Leo initiated has influenced every aspect of what 
can be called the distinctively Catholic learning of 
Europe, and of this country. One must conceive, then, 
the modern movement of thought in Pope Leo’s Church 
as by no means confined to technical matters of scho- 
lastic doctrine. 

On the other hand, one, indeed, must not exaggerate 
the nature of the philosophical reform which the Pope 


AND MODERN THOUGHT All 


undertook to bring to pass. Like every official act of his 
Church, Leo’s famous instructions regarding the study 
of philosophy were explicitly the carrying out of a tra- 
ditional policy in a new instance. Nothing was meant 
to be novel about the undertaking except the emphasis 
which the Pope laid upon certain aspects of philosophi- 
cal education, and the directions which he acordingly 
gave to teachers and to scholars as to the conduct of 
their studies. Nothing revolutionary was intended. The 
new movement was, indeed, quite explicitly a revival. 
But the intellectual situation in the modern world at 
the time when this revival was initiated made the un- 
dertaking very fruitful, and, as a fact, productive of 
decidedly unexpected results. A brief explanation may 
help to indicate, so far as the matter is one of public 
knowledge at all, both why the Pope’s plan was formed 
and why it proved so effective. 


II 
Tue Position or St. THomas AQuINas 


The classic Catholic philosophy, which has so largely 
determined the nature of the theological training of the 
Catholic clergy, received its definite shaping during the 
thirteenth century. In that century, in fact, a decided 
revolution was actually effected; not, of course, in the 
doctrines of the Catholic Church (for these had long 
since been settled), but in the educational life of the 
Catholic schools, and especially in the way in which 
theological teaching came to be related to philosophy. 
Ever since, in the ninth century, the development of 
medizval learning had been fairly begun, the Catholic 
schools had been seeking for a satisfactory technical 
guidance for their theological instruction. They had 


412 POPE, LEO'S (PHILOSOPERY 


looked for such guidance not only in the tradition of the 
fathers of the Church, so far as that tradition was then 
accessible to them, but also in the thought of ancient 
philosophy, so far as documents which represented it 
were in their hands at all. The resources at the disposal 
of their scholarship long remained meager. But at 
length a new light began to come to them in the form of 
a renewed knowledge of Aristotle, derived, at first quite 
indirectly, through Arabic sources. The philosophical 
system of Aristotle accordingly began to be of impor- 
tance for the Catholic schools at the outset of the 
thirteenth century. After a period of suspicion and of 
hostility, in the course of which Aristotle’s doctrine was 
even at one time condemned by authority, a reaction 
came. Albert the Great, and later his still greater pupil, 
Thomas Aquinas, not only studied the relation between 
Aristotle’s doctrine and that of the Christian church, 
but undertook a systematic exposition and defense of 
the whole of Catholic theology in terms of the concep- 
tions and of the principal philosophical teachings of 
Aristotle, in so far as such a synthesis of Christian the- 
ology and Greek thinking proved to be at all possible. 
This task was carried to completion by Thomas himself 
— the most famous of all the scholastic thinkers. 
Thomas very definitely distinguished between the pro- 
per office of philosophy (which, as he teaches, expresses 
what the unaided human reason can do to find out and 
to formulate natural and spiritual truth), and the office 
of faith (which enables us, as he holds, to be certain of 
revealed truths such as, in a large measure, transcend 
what reason can find out). Nevertheless, our scholastic 
doctor still assigned a very high rank to philosophy as 
an auxiliary to faith, and as an aid in formulating theo- 
logical truth. He also vindicated for philosophy a cer- 


AND MODERN THOUGHT 413 


tain limited, but very genuine, freedom of method and 
of opinion, within its own province. Asa result, Thomas 
stands, from any fair point of view, Catholic or non- 
Catholic, decidedly high, not only as a theologian, but 
also as a rational philosophical inquirer. His was an 
essentially synthetic and harmonizing mind. Not only 
was his erudition, for his time, enormous; but his reflec- 
tive working over of his massive and often very hetero- 
geneous materials was marvelously ingenious and thor- 
ough-going. While not a great originator of opinions, 
he was an organizer of thought, and as such was of very 
high rank. Through him scholastic philosophy attained 
its most perfect expression. He was especially successful 
in weaving into an at least plausible unity some of the 
most contradictory tendencies of Christian theology. 
Especially in dealing with the extremely difficult doc- 
trine of the Church as to the relation between God and 
the world, and with the almost equally perplexing theo- 
logical theory as to the nature of the human soul, and as 
to its relation with the body and with the natural and 
spiritual order generally, Thomas showed his skill as a 
harmonizer of conflicting opinions. Standing, as a phi- 
losopher, on the very brink, so to speak, of pantheism, 
he is still able, as a theologian, so to state the relation of 
God to the created world as to leave his own orthodoxy 
unquestionable, and pantheism discredited. Fully 
aware that a rational explanation of all things as due to 
God’s plan seems to involve a philosophical determin- 
ism, Thomas nevertheless, vindicated for man the free- 
dom of the will. Accepting from Aristotle a theory of 
the soul which at first appears to make the mind quite 
inseparable from the body, Thomas still defends both 
the incorporeal nature of the soul and the rational neces- 
sity of the doctrine of immortality. And all these dis- 


4t4 POPE LEO’S PHILOSOPHY 


tinctions and unifications of doctrine he states with such 
clearness of style, with such subtlety of argument, with 
such serenity of manner, and with such gentleness to- 
wards all opponents, that both the labors of the thinker 
and the cruel tragedies of conflicting opinion involved 
seem, as one reads him, to fade into the background, and 
the reader remains, with the scholastic doctor himself, 
in the light of a very kindly spirit and of a very ingen- 
ious intellect. One need not be convinced in order to 
admire. 

Now Thomas Aquinas has stood, from the first, very 
high amongst Catholic teachers. After a comparatively 
brief period in which he was the object of somewhat 
violent attack on the part of certain of his contempo- 
raries and successors amongst scholastic theologians, the 
position of Thomas in the first rank of the doctors of his 
Church became unquestioned. Most of the teaching 
religious orders (as Pope Leo himself points out in his 
encyclical upon Thomas’s philosophy), have long re- 
quired, as a matter of rule, that the doctrines of Aquinas 
should be the model and guide for all their own instruc- 
tors. Thomas has consequently been, for centuries, the 
typical scholastic theologian, and his rivals need not here 
concern us. 

Nevertheless, despite the almost unbroken traditions 
of the primacy of St. Thomas amongst the scholastic 
teachers of doctrine, various motives have combined to 
make the study of his works at first hand somewhat 
neglected, at certain periods, by the theologians of his 
Church. For even when he was fully recognized as the 
model for the teaching given in the various religious 
orders, it was possible and easy to substitute briefer 
compends for his own works, and the making of text- 
books has been, amongst Catholic schools, much what 


—-— 


AND MODERN THOUGHT 415 


it too often is elsewhere. One textbook may copy an- 
other, more or less unintelligently; tradition degenerates; 
and Thomas, as. we now learn from Catholic sources, 
often used to be pretty far away and to remain in too 
large a measure unread, even when one professed to be 
teaching his opinions. Moreover, the course of con- 
temporary controversy, as well as the ambitions of in- 
dividual writers and teachers, often led Catholic schools 
to neglect their more strictly scholastic tradition alto- 
gether, for the sake of some other and more modern 
fashion of thinking. And in any case the voluminous 
works of the later scholastics, of the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries — men of very much less power than 
Thomas — were long likely to stand as a sort of barrier 
in the way of the older master, hindering students from 
getting a knowledge of his own writings at first hand, 
however much his primacy might be formally recog- 
nized. 

It was in order, not so much to restore St. Thomas 
himself to this formally recognized dignity which, in the 
minds of Catholic teachers, he had never lost, as to 
secure for his original works a study, and for his methods 
as a thinker the prominence which Leo held to be their 
due, that the late Pope, almost at the outset of his pon- 
tificate, in the encyclical of August 4, 1879, directed 
that the “‘precious wisdom of St. Thomas”’ should be 
restored to its ancient place, should be propagated as 
widely as possible, should be applied to the defense of 
the Catholic faith against assailants, should be studied 
as carefully as possible in its original sources, and should 
be interpreted as the regular basis for the philosophical 
instruction in Catholic schools. 


416 POPE LEO’S PHILOSOPHY 
III 


SIGNIFICANCE OF THE Pope’s ENCYCLICAL 


So far the Pope’s letter appears, to the external ob- 
server, to be concerned with matters that interest his 
own clergy and their pupils almost exclusively. But the 
encyclical has another aspect, and emphasizes another 
purpose that the author had in mind. The philosophy 
of St. Thomas, so Leo points out, must, in the Pope’s 
opinion, prove especially useful in combating the errors 
of modern thought, and in stating the case of the Church 
to the world of today. Therefore, to the end that the 
revival of the study of the greatest of the scholastic 
doctors shall prove effective in serving the purposes of 
the modern Church, the Pope, towards the close of his 
encyclical, emphasizes the importance of studying 
modern philosophical and scientific problems in the light 
of the Thomistic doctrine. The physical sciences, Leo 
insists, “will not only receive no detriment, but will 
greatly gain from a restoration of the older philosophy.” 
There is, he is assured, “no conflict” between the 
“philosophical principles”? of the school and the “cer- 
tain and admitted results” of the modern study of na- 
ture. Meanwhile, as the Pope adds, it is in no wise his 
intention to propose that the present age shall accept 
such results — if there are any such results — of the 
scholastic philosophy, as are found to be actually op- 
posed to the ascertained truths that have come to light 
in later times. It is the wisdom of St. Thomas that he 
means to emphasize and to bring again to honor; and he 
does not plead for the blind acceptance, along with this 
wisdom, of any demonstrable errors that the human 
fallibility of the scholastic doctors may have left stand- 
ing in their works. In brief, while nearly the whole of 


AND MODERN THOUGHT 417 


what the Pope says, in his encyclical concerning St. 
Thomas, takes the form of the most emphatic and un- 
qualified eulogy of that thinker’s doctrine, modern 
Catholic scholarship is, in this letter, called upon to 
undertake the task of “increasing and perfecting the old 
by means of the new,” and is required to make the de- 
liberate effort to rethink the results of modern science 
in terms of the scholastic principles, while the admission 
is made that, in this process, there may indeed prove to 
be some results of scholastic philosophical inquiry which 
will have to be modified in the light of recent research. 
As for the harmony of modern science and scholasticism, 
that is expressly declared by the Pope to have to do with 
the philosophical “principles”; and the Pope tacitly 
leaves the reader to understand that he is well aware 
how imperfect was the knowledge of the special laws and 
facts of the natural world which the scholastic writers 
were able, in their time, to possess. Thus, however, 
the task defined by Leo’s instructions is not confined 
to any mere restatement of the letter of the Thom- 
istic doctrine, but extends to a deliberate undertaking 
to show that Catholic philosophy is adequate to cope, 
not only with the problems, but with the ascertained 
results and the positive achievements of modern in-— 
quiry. And so, while the invitation to participate in the 
intellectual work of the modern world, and to vindicate 
their own philosophy by explicitly applying it to the 
questions and ideas of today, occupies but a brief place 
in the closing paragraphs of the Pope’s encyclical, there 
can be no doubt of the prominence of this aspect of his 
purpose in Leo’s mind. 

Now it is easy thus to assert that no ascertained result 
of modern science or philosophy is in conflict with the 
true principles of scholasticism. That assertion, in one 


418 POPE LEO’S PHILOSOPHY 


form or another, may be found in the proper paragraph 
of almost any compend of scholastic philosophy. It is 
also easy to label any non-Catholic doctrine an error. 
That, too, the Catholic textbooks, however brief, had 
not failed to do from time immemorial. But the novelty 
and the special interest of Leo’s letter lies in the fact 
that he thus counseled his scholars to make good such 
assertions, first through a new and studious restoration 
of the classic scholasticism in its integrity, and, secondly 
through a deliberate effort to bring it into explicit rela- 
tion to modern problems, and to make other people see 
the matter as the Catholic thinker saw it. When one 
adds that the Pope, as it were, in parenthesis, admitted 
in two very brief but weighty passages of his encyclical 
that this process would inevitably involve certain modi- 
fications of the philosophical tradition in order to adjust 
scholasticism to the modern world, one begins to see how 
momentous for Catholic scholarship might prove to be 
the task which the Pope set before his Church. 

When you appeal afresh to the verdict, not merely of 
tradition, but of a renewed and living philosophy, you 
deliberately undertake the task, not merely of asserting 
what you believe, but of analyzing, and of making quite 
explicitly conscious, the grounds of your assertion. 
When you break away from mere compends and text- 
books, and require the detailed understanding of the 
whole work of so many-sided a thinker as was St. 
Thomas, you put yourself in the position of imitating 
not so much his mere formulas as his spirit of research. 
He lived, in his century, in a plastic age. He was a hero 
and a reformer of teaching. You tend to make men to- 
day try to be like him. When you undertake to assimi- 
late, in a philosophical spirit, the whole result of modern 
inquiry, you inevitably expose yourself to the fate of be- 


AND MODERN THOUGHT 41g 


ing in some measure assimilated yourself during the 
process. For any man inevitably tends to become what 
he thinks. When you combine all these undertakings in 
one, and set the whole world of Catholic scholars to 
work enthusiastically upon the new task, you are likely 
to find, after twenty years or more have passed, that St. 
Thomas’s spirit 1s, indeed, more potent than his letter, 
that the application of this spirit of inquiry to modern 
problems has indeed brought you into closer touch with 
the intellectual issues of the day, but that there is also a 
tendency to the modification and to the modernization 
of your own Catholic thinking — a tendency that goes 
farther than you at first had anticipated. Is this result 
for the best? That is a question that Catholics must 
answer for themselves. 

As an outsider, I do not, I think, at all exaggerate the 
degree to which the intellectual life of Catholicism has 
actually been altered in the course of this process. I 
recognize how very conservative the great body of 
Catholic theologians have remained, and I do not im- 
agine that either the dogmas or the political policy of 
that church will undergo any notable change at any 
early date in consequence of the movement of which I 
speak, no matter how far it goes. But what I do see, as 
I look over the recent literature of discussion, is (1) that 
there is a distinct increase of active codperation on the 
part of Catholic scholars in the relatively neutral tasks 
of modern science and scholarship. I see also (2) that 
there is a great increase 1n the understanding and ap- 
preciation of philosophers (such, for instance, as Kant), 
whom Catholic teachers all used to condemn without 
reserve or knowledge, but whom some of them, notably 
in France, have lately been disposed not only to com- 
prehend, but also, in certain respects, openly to follow. 


420 POPE 'LEO’S “PHILOSOPEY 


And (3) I also read, occasionally, efforts to show that 
there is nothing in the “philosophical principles” of 
scholasticism which is at all hostile to the transforma- 
tion of species, or to the whole set of doctrines known by 
the name of evolution, in so far, at least, as these doc- 
trines, are matters of natural science. Nor are such 
views limited to men like the late unhappy Mivart-men 
who are at heart only half-way Catholics, and who, any 
day, may have to break with their church as he did. No, 
I find such views maintained, with various modifica- 
tions, by men whose position amongst the faithful 
seems, at least, when viewed from without, to be quite 
Secutes 7 

The late Pope in 1899 expressed in a letter to the 
French bishops his deep sorrow over the just mentioned 
movement amongst French Catholic philosophers in the 
direction of Kant’s philosophy. And it is quite true 
that this movement is, on its face, opposed to the spirit, 
as it very certainly is to the letter, of the encyclical of 
1879. Yet the links that bind the original effort which 
Leo initiated to the philosophical movement in France 
which, in 1899, he deplored, are not hard to trace. In- 
stead of some brief, sharply worded paragraph about 
the “‘absurd errors” of Kant, such as the older scho- 
lastic compends were likely to contain, Leo’s method as 
he outlined it in his encyclical, once actually applied to 
the study of philosophy, has now substituted the lengthy, 
careful, scholarly, sometimes bitter, but also sometimes 
very dispassionate reviews of modern thinkers, and of 
Kant among the number — reviews which are now so 
much more common than they used to be in the works 
of Catholic philosophers. After all, was not St. Thomas 
in his century tolerant in dealing with his philosophical 
adversaries? Was he not scrupulously fair in stating an 


AND MODERN THOUGHT 421 


opponent’s case and almost invariably gentle in tone? 
And was he not ready on occasion to learn from the very 
Arabian philosophers whom he refuted? In fact, then, 
this Thomistic revival has certainly led to a spirit of in- 
creased care in expounding, and of increased fairness 
and gentleness in characterizing the philosophical and 
theological opponents of Catholicism. And, therefore, 
is it surprising that, without intending in the least to 
sacrifice their faith, certain of the French Catholic 
thinkers have been led, in the course of their studies, to 
find more truth in Kant than they had anticipated, and 
to assimilate him indeed to their own teachings, while 
in turn being in some degree assimilated by him. If 
some of these thinkers, disregarding the letter of Leo’s 
original instructions, no longer make the philosophy of 
the school at all prominent in their teachings, is that 
more than one natural result of encouraging thoughtful 
men to attempt afresh the task of bringing the Church 
near to the intellectual life of the modern world? A 
similar freedom, as we know, has appeared in a good 
deal of recent Catholic scholarship regarding questions 
of scripture criticism. And other symptoms of a relative 
spiritual independence are notable in many regions of 
Catholic thought upon which I cannot here enter. 


IV 
TENDENCIES IN ST. THOMAS WHICH INVITE CHANGE 


I have spoken of some of the symptoms, in recent 
Catholic scholarship, of the growth of broader and 
fairer methods of investigation and of polemic than 
formerly prevailed. I am the more disposed to refer 
these symptoms, as effects, to the Neo-Scholastic move- 
ment as a direct or indirect cause, in view of the fact 


422 POPE LEO’S PHILOSOPHY 


that St. Thomas Aquinas himself, typical Catholic 
thinker as he is, still furnishes in his method and in his 
system many features that especially seem to invite, yes, 
almost to require, development, and in the end change, 
just as soon as you try to use him, in the way contem- 
plated by Leo, as a mediator between modern thinking 
and the doctrine of his Church. I have already indi- 
cated some of these features. To explain in any detail 
what they are, I should indeed have to enter upon tech- 
nical philosophical problems. As a fact, Thomas’s sys- 
tem is in its very essence an elaborate effort to mediate 
between opposing theological tendencies. In conse- 
quence, St. Thomas in his own day modified ideas even 
while he harmonized them. In this sense he was pro- 
gressive. To study the detail of his thinking, in the 
light of modern inquiry, and then to undertake, in his 
spirit, still further theological mediations, this is in- 
evitably to arouse into renewed growth the very type 
of philosophical thinking for which he stood, namely, 
the type of thinking which modifies former conceptions 
even in the act of defending them. But the problems of 
today are infinitely more complex than were those of the 
thirteenth century. The new mediations will tend in 
consequence, just in so far as they are pursued in St. 
Thomas’s own spirit of thorough-going conscientious- 
ness, to lead to greater changes in the conceptions of 
Catholic theology than he in his time brought to pass. 
If such change was at all to be dreaded by Catholic 
opinion, it would, therefore, have been safer to leave 
St. Thomas imprisoned in the old-fashioned scholastic 
methods and to leave modern thought to be condemned, 
in the old way, in a few brief paragraphs by these text- 
books. Pope Leo, after all, “let loose a thinker” 
amongst his people — a thinker, to be sure, of unques- 


AND MODERN THOUGHT 423 


tioned orthodoxy, but after all a genuine thinker whom 
the textbooks had long tried, as it were, to keep lifeless, 
and who, when once revived, proves to be full of the 
suggestion of new problems, and of an effort towards 
new solutions. 

In three parts of his system St. Thomas, to my mind, 
especially invites some measure, at least, of critical re- 
construction, so soon as you undertake carefully to 
review his position in the light of modern philosophical 
inquiry. First, his theory of the nature and limits of 
human knowledge, a theory derived from Aristotle, 
especially calls not merely for restatement, but for re- 
adjustment, as soon as you try to apply it to the inter- 
pretation of our modern consciousness. The historical 
dignity of this theory is unquestionable. We owe much 
to Leo and to the Neo-Scholastic movement for calling 
its problems afresh to our attention. But the very effort 
to bring this theory face to face with modern thought 
must result in a change of this traditional doctrine — a 
change which may be slow, but which will be sure to 
prove pervasive and momentous for Catholic philosophy. 
The before-mentioned Kantian movement amongst the 
French Catholic philosophers is but one symptom of 
this aspect of the new sort of thinking. The questions 
involved are technical, but they concern the whole prob- 
lem of the scope and the office of religious faith, and so, 
in the end, they tend to modify the whole attitude of the 
theologians most concerned. 

Secondly, the problem of the relations between God 
and the world, as St. Thomas treats that topic, is one 
which has only to be reviewed carefully in the light of 
modern science and of modern philosophy, to secure an 
alteration of the essentially unstable equilibrium in 
which Thomas left this heaven-piercing tower of his 


424 POPE LEO’S PHILOSOPHY 


speculation. Here I, of course, have no space to speak 
of a philosophical problem to which, as a student of 
philosophy, I have devoted so much of my own atten- 
tion — namely, the problem about the conception of 
God. But when I read, in more than one recent philo- 
sophical essay of Catholic origin, expressions that admit 
the decidedly symbolic and human character of the 
language in which even the dogmas of the Church have 
to be expressed, so far as they relate to the nature of 
God, when stress is also laid, very rightly, upon that 
aspect of St. Thomas’s teaching which emphasizes this 
very inadequacy of even the traditional formulas to the 
business of defining divine things, when I meet at the 
same time with admissions that St. Thomas’s positive 
theory of the divine attributes involves these or these 
apparent contradictions, which still need philosophical 
solution — then, indeed, I see not that our more modern 
thinking is wholly right and Thomas wrong — but that 
Catholic theology is nowadays in a position where it is 
bound either to progress, or else to abandon the whole 
business of reviving the spirit of serious philosophical 
thinking. I. see too, that St. Thomas as a mere au- 
thority does not suffice for the purposes even of my 
Catholic brethren, but that St. Thomas as a thinker has 
set them afresh to thinking, so that they, like the rest of 
us, are living in an age of transition. They will no doubt, 
keep their essential dogmas; but they will tend to con- 
ceive the contents of these dogmas in new ways. And 
that process, in the course of centuries, will go very far, 
unless they somehow arbitrarily cut it short, by ceasing 
to philosophize. 

In the third place, the before-mentioned doctrine of 
St. Thomas as to the nature of the human soul, and as 
to its relation to the body, and as to the sense in which 


AND MODERN THOUGHT 426 


man possesses free will and individuality — all this doc- 
trine is one especially liable to modification and read- 
justment in the light of modern inquiry. Here chances 
to be, in fact, one of the favorite regions of study for the 
Neo-Thomistic authors. Essays and volumes on the re- 
lations between Thomism and modern psychology are 
very numerous in Catholic theological literature. And 
the other problems about man’s evolution, nature, and 
destiny are very frequently reviewed by writers of the 
same school. Here, too, the spirit of fairness and of 
thoroughness seems to be growing. Here, too, the 
mutual understanding between Catholic and modern 
thinking tends to increase. And here, indeed, from the 
nature of the problems at issue, Thomas’s Aristotelian- 
ism seems to have an especially good chance to show its 
power to assimilate modern results. But nowhere more 
than here does the other tendency also inevitably assert 
itself. The traditional doctrines are in their turn assim1- 
lated. They grow nearer to those which they were to 
overcome. The result tends to a distinct modernizing of 
Catholic thought upon these as upon other fundamental 
matters. 


Vy 
THE OUTLOOK 


Is this process to continue? Where is it to end? Is it 
likely to have important consequences for modern 
thinking at large? I have already indicated my views 
as to these matters. The process here in question 1s, on 
the whole, of real importance to the intellectual world 
at large, because Catholic Scholars are numerous, are 
often of great ability, and are men whose codperation in 
the common interests of human thought is distinctly 


426 POPE LEO SV PHILOSOR Ens 


worth having. Unity of opinion is not so desirable in 
this world, as is unity of spirit in the search for truth; 
and the later movement of Catholic thought has, on the 
whole, tended to a distinct increase in such unity be- 
tween their activities and the world of modern inquiry. 
We who are without have no interest, as ourselves in- 
quirers, in winning controversial victories over Catho- 
lics,or in converting them to our peculiar ideas. But we 
are interested in whatever helps them to take part in the 
common intellectual life of their time. We think that 
Leo, as a fact, helped them even more than he originally 
intended, to do just this thing. And if the process goes 
on unhindered, the final result must, we believe, prove 
very important both for Catholic thought, and for 
spiritual good-will among men. Of course, in this paper 
I have not attempted to estimate the vast forces that 
tend to keep Catholic thought conservative, and to 
crush out all these newer variations of opinion. Every- 
one knows that those conservative forces are vast, and 
that what I have here indicated forms only a part — 
and so far, doubtless, a relatively small part of modern 
Catholic mental life. But I have meant to indicate the 
presence of a certain leaven that may, in time, serve to 
leaven the whole lump. 

Of “liberal Catholicism” we have heard a good deal 
of late. We usually hear of it in connection with the 
political, or, in general, with the worldly activities of the 
Church. I confess that, as a political institution, as an 
organization having worldly interests and ambitions, 
the Catholic Church never awakens my sympathy and 
seldom even arouses any considerable interest in my 
mind. For in respect of these worldly matters I can 
never fathom its true motives, nor understand its 
methods, while on the other hand I feel so sure of the 


AND MODERN THOUGHT 427 


ability of the modern world to take care of itself that I 
have no serious fear of the permanent triumph of what 
is called “clericalism.” I recognize the practical im- 
portance of keeping safe the great principles of modern 
civilization. But I do not feel that these principles, at 
_least in our country, are sufficiently endangered by any 
plans of clerical politicians to make the matter of our 
political relations to the Catholic Church one that has 
at present any great interest for me. On the other hand, 
the intellectual life of the Catholic Church seems to me 
something very interesting. The cause of sound think- 
ing and of dispassionate inquiry has suffered so much in 
the past from dreary and bitter religious controversy 
that it is a welcome thing to see these symptoms of the 
coming of a time when the scholars of the Catholic 
Church may be willing to codperate in the general prog- 
ress of science and of philosophical inquiry rather than 
to condemn in block, as errors, thoughts which the 
clerical judges have not taken the trouble to under- 
stand. Is St. Thomas, the angelic doctor, destined to 
act as a peacemaker, and to teach his Church to love 
new light, even as, in his century, he also loved, and 
used, the new light that Aristotle seemed to him to 
bring? . 

If this result is to come about, it will inevitably in- 
volve, as I have pointed out, a certain assimilation of 
traditional Catholic ideas to those of modern thought. 
But I have, in addition, indicated what I firmly believe, 
namely, that such processes of assimilation are also in- 
evitably mutual. I do not imagine either that the 
Catholic Church will ever abandon its characteristic 
dogmas, or that the modern thought which is now non- 
Catholic will ever again adopt those dogmas. But I do 
see that we who study modern philosophy must gain by 


428 POPE LEO’S PHILOSOPHY 


understanding the point of view which scholasticism 
represents, and what we shall gain is especially an in- 
crease of our sense of the historical continuity of human 
thinking — a sense which religious controversy has 
often tended to confuse. St. Thomas and his fellows 
have something to say to us, as well as to Catholics, and 
I am glad to have it said. Meanwhile everybody has an 
interest in the substitution of reasonable mutual tolera- 
tion, codperation and understanding, for blind hostility. 
Hence, one watches with keen concern a process which 
seems to tend, in this sense, to the organization of a 
“liberal” form of Catholicism. 

But will Catholic officialism — conservative as it is, 
political as its motives have to be, reactionary as its 
policy has so often been — will such officialism permit 
the new Catholic scholarship further liberty to develop 
on these lines? Will not the new Pope, whoever he may 
prove to be, undertake to bring to a pause the evolution 
of these tendencies towards a reform of Catholic philos- 
ophy, and towards an era of good feeling between 
Catholic and non-Catholic science and scholarship? I 
confess to a good deal of doubt upon this subject. I 
confess also that I am rather disposed to anticipate a 
reaction against all this natural, but, as I fancy, offi- 
cially unexpected growth that has taken place in the 
world of Catholic scholarship within the last two dec- 
ades. The Catholic Church is today, as of old, an insti- 
tution under the control of men to whom scholarship and 
even wisdom will always be secondary to motives of a 
decidedly worldly sort. I cannot hope that the officials 
will, in the long run, tolerate the philosophers, unless 
the latter show themselves less vital in their inquiries, 
and less eager in their mental activities, than they have 
recently been. 


AND MODERN THOUGHT 429 


But what an admirable opportunity for a genuine 
spiritual growth will be lost if Leo’s revival of Catholic 
philosophy has even its first fruits cut off, and is not 
permitted to bear the still richer fruit that, in case it is 
unhindered, it will some day surely bring forth. 








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